


Toothiana and the Holy War

by proser132



Series: It Tolls For Thee [3]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Backstories Galore, Backstory, F/F, M/M, Marriage, Mentions of gore/violence, Other tags to be added, for Tooth's chapters, marriage issues, minor character deaths (you all knew they were dead already though), monologue format, world-building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-05-24 21:30:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 59,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6167464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/proser132/pseuds/proser132
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At last, Tooth is ready to tell her story.</p><p>Aster and Jack think they're ready. They're really not.</p><p>(In a series of stories, Tooth tells them the history of Riverfield and the people who make it a home, leading to a revelation no one expected and they may not be able to handle. Meanwhile, things are changing, and Aster and Jack have grown complacent, especially in their marriage. This bodes ill for all, if they can't bring themselves together.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhhh I know it's late I'm sorry forgive me I just got back a typing machine
> 
> So! Welcome to the third part of 'It Tolls for Thee', and something I'm very proud to be able to present! There are some reminders I'd like to pass on:
> 
> 1\. Everyone is an unreliable narrator, meaning they only know what they know, and could be missing parts of the puzzle (and indeed, often are). Trust your gut, and no one else's.  
> 2\. There will be mentions of violence and gore in parts of Tooth's stories, due to her profession as a doctor, and while none of it is particularly explicit (I don't think) please proceed with your own self-care in mind.  
> 3\. This will be shorter than PA by about half, or so, but is still lengthy-ish. It is also not the final part.
> 
> With that, enjoy the prologue, and Chapter 1, as a bundle!
> 
> (also promise you'll forgive me when the story's over)

Aster set down the latest bundle of wood beside the large fireplace in the centre of his home, the smoke threading up and out a cleverly hidden chimney, where the heat and flame couldn't harm the tree that he lived in. He smiled at Jack, who was laying on the couch and lazily knitting – something brown, Aster thought. Could be a scarf, could be a pair of socks; it was hard to tell at this stage.

'Budge up,' he said, and Jack, not looking away from what he was doing, lifted into the air. Aster shimmied past his legs and sat down on the cushion, and Jack settled back down, feet neatly in Aster's lap.

'That the last of it for tonight?' Jack asked.

'Should be,' Aster agreed, running a paw absently over Jack's knee. 'In the morning, remind me to re-stack the wood pile. Next thing ye know, the whole thingo will collapse and I'll have to do it anyway.'

'Mmhmm,' Jack said, and sat up, shuffling nearer. Aster made a space for him under his arm, and Jack tucked himself in it, turning to face the other direction and continue his knitting.

They were quiet, Aster beginning to drift off a bit, the clacking of Jack's metal needles comforting and familiar. _Socks,_ Aster thought hazily, eyes cracking open a bit to peer at Jack's project. _Or a very small sweater._

Jack turned his head and kissed Aster's arm, fingers never pausing in the looping patterns of – whatever it was. 'Time for bed?' he asked softly.

Aster went to reply, but was interrupted by an firm knock. He and Jack traded a look.

'It's too late for visitors,' Jack said, biting his lip. 'Do you think – maybe something went wrong? Something happened?'

'Em would've sent word,' Aster said soothingly, setting his paw on Jack's arm.

'Unless it happened to her,' Jack said, floating into the air. 'I'll get it.'

Aster frowned, and caught Jack's wrist. 'I'm sure everything's fine,' he said insistently, when Jack's face threatened to cloud over with concern. 'Probably some last minute thing someone needs. Ye know Tooth's always running out of something or other.'

'You're right,' Jack said, as the knock sounded again. 'I'd say I hate it when you're right, but I don't want to think about it if you're wrong.'

He floated out of the room, and Aster threw another log onto the fire, ears cocked in the direction Jack had gone, towards the front door.

He heard the latch open, the sounds of the night outside, and Jack's voice say with surprise, 'Tooth?'

'Hello, Jack,' Tooth's voice replied, as the door clicked shut once more. 'I'm sorry about the hour – Arti needed help with canning, and the triplets were too busy tending to the Nooreys. Four of them, down with a stomach bug at once. Goodness, I'm just glad it wasn't all nine of them.'

'Don't worry about it,' Jack's voice assured her, growing louder as they neared. They entered the room, and Tooth smiled at Aster.

'What can we do for ye, Tooth?' Aster asked, standing up.

'Well –' she said, doing a mid-air shuffle. 'Bunny, do you remember what I said to you a month ago? On your wedding day.'

Jack gave him a curious look, but Aster nodded slowly. 'Ye said ye were almost ready to talk about – yer past,' he said, and held out a hand to Jack, who floated over and took it. 'Are ye – is that what this is about?'

'Yes,' she said, taking a seat on the chair. 'If it's not a good time, I can come back, but if – if you'd like, I think I'm ready.'

'What are you two talking about?' Jack asked, looking utterly bewildered, even as Aster tugged him back down to the couch.

Tooth sighed, and Aster hadn't ever heard her sound so – tired.

'Let me explain,' she said, and began.


	2. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tooth has her own voice at last.

'Let me explain. I've been here in Riverfield for thirteen, almost fourteen years now. Sometimes I forget I haven't always been here – it's so much home now that it feels strange, sometimes, to remember that I'm not from Normerica at all.

'And I _am_ sorry about the lateness of the hour – certainly, I'm not going to finish tonight! You two work so hard; you need your sleep, and there's a lot to cover, some of it not even ready yet. I've only really had a chance to talk to Sandy and North, so far, but Ombric's been writing me letters, and Katherine has sketched out the outline, so it's a little clearer to me now.

'I know I promised to tell you where I came from, Bunny, but a lot of it isn't just my story. It's very strange, how lives get intertwined over time, and with – well, with what happened two years ago, and with the dreams, a lot of it seems a little uncanny, now. A little too – perfect, maybe, or well timed. I don't know if I'd call it fate, or destiny, or whatever silly thing Sandy's calling it this week, but I suppose I'd say that sometimes there are ways things must happen, always. Like gravity. Even we fliers know that we have to give in to gravity eventually.

'I came to Riverfield at the behest of Katherine. We'd met somewhere in the northern windplains, travelling in the same direction. I don't need to tell you how dangerous travelling can be, and with all seven of my daughters, we stuck out a bit. Really, it was a great deal of luck that we ran into Katherine and Nightlight when we did – for the both of us; they stick out quite a bit, too.

'At that point, me and my girls had seen just about every manner of mutt it was possible to see. At least, that's what I'd thought until I met the two of them. My girls and I were – are, pretty unique, even for where we come from. You’ll have seen it, on your travels, and even here, in Riverfield. There’s not only different _kinds_ of mutts, but different _strengths._ I’d never run across someone like me or my girls before.

‘All of us have something – special, something powerful to us. I think part of that is who we are; the parts we were meant to play, the way we are the people we met in the dreams and the way they are us. Another part of it is that – well, according to Ombric, there are caretakers born from time to time. People intended to do great things.

'As far as I was concerned at the time, the things I'd done were pretty far from being great, in all but the most terrible of senses. We'll get to that part soon, but for now – where was – right.’   


'My girls and I’d been wandering for... goodness, I think it was three years at that point, before we came to Normerica. This way and that, all over Asia. Indira was only five when we left India, and Padma has no memories of it at all. I wish sometimes it was different, but when Indira tells me the memories _she_ has...   


'So we wandered. Indira was the eldest, at eight, then Mandira at seven, Parvati, Lakshmi, and Kali at six, Arti was five, and Padma had just turned four. All birds, all looking alike – I don't have to tell you the strange picture we made! I taught my girls what I knew – what was age-appropriate, anyway – for instance, I insisted they had to be eight before they could learn how to splint bones.   


'Oh, don't give me that look, Bunny. I've always been a doctor. My father was a doctor, and a hunter before that. I learned medicine from the time I first opened my eyes; of course I was going to teach my daughters. Thank goodness they all were at least interested. Arti, I think, wants to go into something else – ahh, Padma's been telling you, I take it! Arti does very well with animal medicine, I think she'll be splendid.   


'So that's what she was doing last winter! And you never told me, Jack? Well, I never. Good to get some hands-on experience, I suppose, and birthing lambs can be tricky, I've heard.   


'But, back to the story. So when little Padma was four, I asked her what she wanted for her birthday. We were near Old Hángzhōu, in Zhōngguó. I’d thought she’d ask for a special treat, or something pretty, like a doll. That was the usual way of things, for my girls. She looked at me, my darling Padma, so small and so delicate and so shy, and asked that she could have a place to stay for more than a few months. She wanted friends and houses and family.   


'My heart just about broke, my dears. Here was my baby, and all she wanted was a home. We weren't raiders, and the vagabond lifestyle never did suit me. I didn't want to join any of the _lóng_ – oh, the trading caravans back west. So I decided we'd head east – east, as far as we could go. To Normerica! Maybe there, it wouldn't feel so... dangerous.   


'We left that month. It was winter – Padma was born during the Northeast Monsoon, so we were in the offseason for travel when we left. We would have been deeply in debt for our passage had the seas not been so rough - between seasickness, the flu, minor colds, and the usual sorts of injuries sailors acquire when the ocean’s throwing a fit, we’d paid for our passage twice over by the time we made port in Toreno, on the northwest coast.   


'It was a strange city to me, even though I’d spent the past three years in some of the biggest cities throughout Asia. No one spoke Hindi or al-Arabiyyah or Pǔtōnghuà, so I had to pick up English fast. Thank goodness for those years of wandering, otherwise I might have been completely lost – Pǔtōnghuà had been no picnic, either, though at least the grammar made more sense! After a month or two, I knew enough to begin to ask around the native population, find out more about Normerica. Until then, I'd been mostly tending to other immigrants, but since we all came equally poor, it was mostly for free. I never minded, but if we were going to get somewhere, we needed money.   


'The first patient I treated was an elderly man – lung disease gone cancerous, his time was coming. He wished mostly for the pain to be lessened, and that I could do. He took a shine to me and my girls – called us his angels, though it took some time for me to get the concept translated right! And he'd been a traveller in his youth – first generational, you know, one of the late bloomers. He could remember the Before, at least.   


'He'd been born in a place that had once been called New York – ah, I see you know the name! That’s right, though not this area; he grew up near the giant lake northeast of us by a few hundred miles, I think. He'd been twelve when the End came, and the Change occurred – that's what they call it out west, or they did. Count them as different events. Mostly it’s you easterlies who think it was all one thing – of course, they _were_ , the Change was just delayed. The westerlies were a bit more worldly, given their proximity to, well, the rest of the world. There’s not a lot of cross-oceanic trade around here, not like on the west coast.   


‘At any rate, he'd tell my girls all about the mountains he'd grown up in, the valleys, the hidden waterfalls and the snowy winters and the warm summers. My girls became absolutely enchanted with the idea, and I have to admit, so did I. The part of India I had grown up in – Punjam Hy Loo – had been in the mountains.   


'The mountains he painted a picture of were different, though. Less jagged, less sharp. Smoother and rounder, their valleys like dimples instead of secrets. It sounded like... like a dreamscape, to me. A dreamscape of my home, and maybe, if I brought my girls there, I'd be able to tell them the whole story of why we’d left India. They knew some, but they had been so small; I didn’t want to burden them with more. It could wait until we were safe, I told myself.   


'The old man died at last, but his passing was a comfortable thing. I made sure of that. Most don't think it, but tending to the dying and the dead is as big a part of medicine as making sure the living stay that way. His family was very thankful – he was well loved in Toreno, and had more than put in a good word for me and my girls' skill. Soon, we had almost more work than we had time, and within another two months we had enough to head east.   


'East – it's strange, how the word came to mean so much more than a direction. In my mind, it came to mean safety, and hope, and healing – my girls latched onto it, too. They couldn't wait to travel, for the first time in my memory, and I cried the night before we left, because I had so much trouble putting them to sleep. Not that they were difficult, but that they were so excited. I'd never seen them so happy. I wondered if I'd been a bad mother, but – I promised myself that when we found a place at last, I would be the best mother I could. I'd give them a permanent home, one where they could be children, where they could grow and put down roots of their own.   


'So, we set off. Due east, mostly, other than a detour around the fabled great lakes – and I have to admit, I didn't believe all the stories about the size. I'd heard about lakes large as seas before, like the Caspian Sea in Russia, but I'd never seen one myself, and I thought that surely the travellers must be exaggerating.   


'First, we travelled with a Normerican _lóng_ – a caravan, I learned – east until we hit Caraway. Small city, butted right up to the eastern slopes of the Sierras, and the last city before the windplains began. There, we intended to split off and travel alone to Miracle City, which was against the first of the great lakes. The caravan was worried about us – one woman, seven girls, alone in the great windplains? They tried to warn me off, to wait for another caravan. Raiders, they warned us, were everywhere, and they tried to scare my girls, to keep me there.   


'You would be laughing too, Bunny! They had no idea who I was, what I'd done – they saw a small woman, a _doctor_ , and her children. How could we defend ourselves? They kept thinking that until Mandira, bless her little soul, said mild as milk, 'Oh, don't worry about that – Maan will kill them.' I burst a blood vessel in my left eye, I was laughing so hard. Out of the mouths of babes, after all.   


'The windplains are lovely. Long and flat and grey-yellow, sky for miles. It was an easy flight, and what little raiders we did run into – well. I taught my girls how to make the firejars very early on, and they were excellent deterrents.   


'It was shortly after one of those encounters that we met Katherine and Nightlight. The raiders had gone scurrying, great bunch of cowards that they are, and then Kali pointed out the strange glow. It was late afternoon, edging towards twilight, but Kali's always had excellent eyesight – she's very good at stitching, you know, surgical and otherwise – and I flew down to investigate. In the wreckage of the abandoned caravan, I found two prisoners.   


'The first was a girl – what I thought was a girl at first, though when I got closer, she looked older. Brown hair, grey eyes, and a tired-looking tangle of lights around her head. The glow, however, was coming from her companion, a boy she was crouched over.   


'I called down, and nearly got shot for my troubles. The woman was wild-eyed, blood-stained, dusty as the road, and as she shouted back at me the lights around her head turned a vicious orange-yellow. They were her words, I realised, and I flew down a little nearer to hear better, hands held up.   


''Don't come any nearer!' the woman was shouting. 'I'm warning you – I'll blow your head off!' She may have looked wild, but her aim was plenty steady.   


''I'm a doctor,' I called back. 'Are either of you hurt?' I remember asking that distinctly, because the word hurt was completely drowned out by her sob of relief. The words turned blue around her head, and I flew down.   


'The boy – the man, I realised, now that I was closer – wasn't in good shape. My girls followed me, and clustered around, clucking; he had a gouge-like incision as wide as my fist stretching from left to right across his stomach, and his breathing was wet-sounding. Indira and Mandira began looking for our spare bandage and the clear ethyl alcohol that had cost us an arm and a leg in Caraway.   


''How long has he been like this?' I asked, letting my girls do the busywork of checking for pulse, breathing rate, and pupil dilation.   


''A few minutes – not more than ten,' the woman answered, looking more than a bit shocked – of course, I know now that most children Katherine knew would have been horrified by the blood, but my girls are exceptional, aren't they?   


''Then he'll be just fine,' I said, because though the hole in his stomach was long and wide, it wasn't deep, and I could see no viscera through it. It hadn't breached the muscle walls, so the biggest danger was infection and bleed out.   


'My girls and I had him all wrapped up quick as you please – a broken rib, a bumped head, a damaged windpipe (hence the wet breathing, you see – near tore his vocal cords!), and of course, the hole in his abdomen.   


'Meanwhile, I was talking to him. He was dazed, disoriented – it had been a surprise attack, he finally told me, once I assured him that Katherine was still awake and well. Padma, Arti, and Lakshmi were checking her over now, I told him, and only once I'd convinced him that she was alright, could I get him to answer questions. He’d been hit by some kind of bladed weapon, round; it had gouged at his stomach when he’d been fighting, and he’d gone down and knocked his head. Bad luck, no more.   


'Telepathy, even touch telepathy, can be exhausting to the unconscious, so I let him go back to sleep, giving him a quick shot of comfort. The touch empathy has been the greatest gift for healing I could have been given – you'd be surprised how much good a little bit of comfort can do!   


'Katherine was fine, other than a few cuts, and we settled down for the night. The man – Nightlight, I learned – only needed to be checked once or twice, and each time he became clearer, even though he remained unconscious. Katherine was just too wired to sleep, and I've never forced touch empathy on someone, no matter how much they may need it, so I asked her to talk. Tell stories. Take her mind off it.   


'I couldn't have asked a better thing. Katherine has such a natural gift for stories, goodness. She started out telling us about her travels, but eventually all of her stories turned to home – to Riverfield, and her sister town Mt. Sheafer. It sounded idyllic, to me. The little village, with its store and its smith, its library – a real, honest and true library! I'd heard about them, but so many had been utterly ruined in the aftermath of the End that the idea of one preserved was miraculous. And Mt. Sheafer, a town perched in the heights of a mountain – that sounded like a fairy tale. A fairy tale I knew too well.   


'She talked herself right to sleep, and all my girls with her. I kept watch, over this strange man who glowed in the dark and this woman with lights like stars around her head, and my girls, who looked peaceful in a way I'd never seen them.   


'I woke Mandira for a quick watch while I slept for two hours, and when I woke, Katherine and Nightlight were entertaining all of my daughters. The sun was much higher than I'd meant it to be, but they'd watched out for my girls. It was safe.   


'I hadn't felt safe in almost ten years.   


''You should come with us,' Katherine said, looking much more at ease now that Nightlight was at last awake. 'To Riverfield. We could use a doctor like you, and I'm sure your kids would love it.’   


'I thought about the old man in Toreno, who'd spoken so lovingly of his home in the mountains. Thought about the peace in the air after Katherine had finished speaking. Thought about the way I had no true idea where we were headed, save east, and I thought of Riverfield, the peaceful sounding village and the way my girls had sat enthralled during the stories.   


''I think that would be lovely,' I told her, and my daughters looked at me like I'd made the sun rise for the rest of the morning.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick question: before I actually sink the time into this, would anyone be interested in podfic versions of Tooth's chapters, in addition to the text versions?


	3. Intermission: Return

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back! As a quick note, save for one or two cases, this story will be single chapter updates - and the chapter lengths will vary greatly. Once a week, on Saturday, is the update plan, but you know me - schedules don’t last long, haha.

'Goodness,' Tooth said, blinking, 'but it _is_ getting late. I shouldn't keep you much longer.’

'Wait, you can't stop there,' Jack protested, wide eyed. 'That's – oh come on, Kath never told me that story! And –'

'I told you it wouldn't be done tonight,' Tooth sighed, but she was smiling.

Aster smiled back, though it was hard to shake of the haze of the story – she might slip off into tangents, but Tooth was no bodgy storyteller herself.

'Yeah, but who _knows_ when you'll be able to come back,' Jack insisted. 'Come on, a little farther –'

Aster opened his mouth to tell Jack to lay off, and found himself instead yawning widely.   


'Next time, Jack, I promise,' she said firmly, and Aster shrugged, apologetic, at Jack's scowl.

'Fine. But don't think I'll forget.'   


'I wouldn't dare,' Tooth said, patting him on the cheek, and took to the air. 'Show a lady the door, Jack?'

'Be right back,' Jack said, and kissed Aster on the cheek. 'And I've got questions for you, mister, don't you go falling asleep.'

'I'll try, but no promises,' Aster answered, yawning once more through the 'o' of promise. 'Might want to ask quicklike, if I were ye.'   


Jack joined Tooth in the air, and the two of them left the room Tooth's hand settling on his shoulder. Aster sat for a moment, watching the fire, his thoughts muddied. That had been…    


Surprising, certainly. He'd not expected it to happen like this. And the fact that she'd had to consult with others before she'd come here – with North and Sandy, Katherine and Ombric – made him wary. How involved were their stories? How deeply entrenched?   


'Hey, Bun-bun.'   


Aster blinked, and realised Jack was in front of him, smiling softly. 'What did I say?' he said, shaking his head. 'Don't go falling asleep.'

'I wasn't,' Aster protested. 'I was – thinking.'   


'Yeah, there's going to be a lot of that tonight, I think,' Jack said. 'Hold on, I'll get the fire. Can you put away my knitting?'

Aster moved automatically, winding the excess yarn back around its ball, and judging at last that Jack was, in fact, making the arm to a small sweater. Probably for one of the children in the town, Aster thought fondly as he tucked the ball and its unfinished project back into the large basket Jack kept in the curtain.   


Meanwhile, Jack threw some more logs on the fire and tightened the damper, to keep it from burning too quickly. It would be dead by the morning, unless Aster caught it early enough, but the merry flames would keep the house warm until then, and that was enough.   


'Bed, come on,' Jack hummed, floating over to Aster. 'I've got a lot of questions, so you'll want to be comfy.'   


'Can't guarantee I'll have the answers, Snowbird,' Aster warned, following his husband into the hall and up the stairs.

'More than me,' Jack said, and caught Aster's paw in his hand. They walked that way up the two flights of steps to the third floor, where the bedroom and other guest rooms were. After a few minutes, they were tucked in their bed, Jack's bare skin against Aster's fur, and Jack rested his face against his palm.   


'So.'   


Aster sighed theatrically. 'Let fly, love.'   


'You make puns on purpose, and no one believes me,' Jack bemoaned, eyes sparkling. 'Okay, first off – while I have been curious for freaking _ever,_ Tooth _never_ talks about where she comes from. Ever. I didn't even know she was from India until Pitch shouted it out over the town.' Jack's eyes dimmed a bit, and Aster spread a paw down his side, stroking softly until Jack had worked through the knot of emotion and memory still tied to the events of two years past. Jack gave him a grateful smile and brushed his lips over the nearest piece of Aster he could reach, the edge of his left ear, tilted forward to hear Jack's soft words. 'So, why now? Why does she want to tell you – tell us?'   


'I don't know,' Aster admitted. 'Before the fight, she apologised for keeping secrets, and I told her – well, we all keep secrets, ye know that. S'how we work.’

Jack grinned. ‘Not me. I’m an open book.’

Aster rolled his eyes. ‘Weren’t always, Snowbird, and that’s the good oil. Anyway, a month ago, before our wedding, she said she was almost ready.'

'You have no idea you do it,' Jack said, smiling fondly, 'but you still light up when you say _our wedding._ It's just the cutest goddamn thing.'   


'Rack off.'   


'Never have before, sweetheart, won't start now,' Jack said, and dropped his head to the pillows, wriggling nearer and nudging Aster's nose with his own. Aster kissed him, and they lay like that for a few minutes, before Jack pulled back. 'No, don't do that,' he said, 'I've still got stuff to say.'

'Now, what kind of husband would I be if I couldn't distract ye from some piddling questions?'   


'You make up words sometimes, I swear,' Jack snorted. 'And it's not so much a question, just...' Jack shook his head, white hair flopping into his eyes. Aster swept them out of the way, and made a note that it was about time for a haircut. God knew Jack would forget about it until his hair hit his waist. 'The thing is,' Jack continued, 'I'm pretty sure she has a _reason_ to tell us, you know?'

Aster frowned. 'What do ye mean?'   


'I think she's building up to something,' Jack said slowly. 'Before she left, she said something about how next time, she'd tell us about Sandy. Which – awesome, _also_ been curious about that for freaking ever. But why? What does that have to do with _her_ story?'   


'Remember what she said, right at the start?' Aster replied, thinking it over. 'There are ways things _must_ happen, or something like that.'   


'Like gravity,' Jack agreed.   


'So I reckon all of our stories affected each others'. If anyone would know, it would be Tooth – maybe Ombric? I don't know the bloke all that well, but it sounded like he was talking more to Other Ombric than any of us were talking to our other selves. But then, Tooth always seems to know more than she should.'   


'Damn straight,' Jack muttered. Aster gave him a look. 'You, shut up.'   


'What did I –'   


'Just don't even ask. I don't want to talk about it.'   


'I didn't ask –'   


'Fine, you want to know? When I was thirteen, I had to go in for a yearly checkup, and while she was doing her touch empathy thing, she found my giant crush on you. Happy?'   


Aster stared at Jack. 'Ye realise I didn't say a thing, right?'

'You have these – faces, you make faces, and god, I know your curious face, you would have weaselled it out of me eventually.'   


'But I...' Aster sighed. He wasn't going to win this one – if he could even figure out what winning meant. 'Okay, Snowbird. Ye keep thinking that.' He kissed Jack briefly before the frown became a full blown scowl, and nuzzled Jack's cheek with his wide, flat nose. 'Point is, Tooth's going to tell this story the way she wants, and I don't reckon fussing about it's going to make it easier. Best to let it go where it goes.'   


'You don't wonder? At all?'   


'Course I do, Frostbite. Got a brain, don't I?'   


'Sometimes I wonder.'

'Oi,' Aster huffed, and shoved at Jack half-playfully. 'Ye know what they say – takes one to know one, love.'   


Jack's response was a quick tug and shove, dragging Aster atop himself, and grinning at Aster's surprised blink. 'You get so pliant when you're tired,' he said, running his hands over Aster's thighs, and looking up at him through his lashes. The obvious attempt at seduction had Aster laughing, which only made Jack look smug, the jumped up brat. 'Come on. Let me tire you out the rest of the way.'   


'Ye think ye're clever,' Aster said, leaning forward and dropping a kiss onto Jack's mouth, 'but ye're just as brainless as me.'   


'Oh, you'll be brainless, when I'm done with you,' Jack murmured against Aster's lips, and his mouth quirked as he smiled.   


'Do ye promise?' Aster replied, their old challenge, and Jack's eyes lit up.   


An hour later, Aster was drifting off, quite lost for words and indeed as brainless as Jack had threatened, when Jack murmured against his throat, 'Whatever it is, it's going to be big.'

Aster grunted a little, unable to formulate a proper question, but it clearly got his bewildered sentiment across, since Jack's laughter reverberated across his throat.   


'Never mind, sweetheart.' Jack's fingers found his ears, stroking softly along the grain, and Aster sighed, a deep rumbling sound that as far as he could tell Jack tried to draw out whenever he could. 'Go to sleep. I love you.'

'…love ye,' Aster managed to string together before dropping off to sleep entirely, Jack's body warm against his and his mind blissfully blank.

 

  
When he awoke, the house had the beginning chills of a dying fire, and the tree was clamouring for his attention.   


He slid out of bed and tucked the blankets back in, so Jack wouldn't wake up cold, and ran a paw over Jack's hair, who was tossing at the departure of his bedmate. Jack relaxed back into true sleep, and Aster left the room.   


Their bedroom was located in the centre of the house, deepest in the dead wood, so Robin Redbreast, the tree that Aster had briefly been two years past, wouldn't be able to pry. Robin had about the consciousness of a six year old, and Aster _did_ like his privacy. However, Robin had the ability to make an unholy clatter when it wanted his attention, and since Jack ( _lucky tosser,_ Aster thought sourly) couldn't hear plants that weren’t making physical noise, it was always up to Aster to find out what was wrong.   


He stalked down the stairs to the main fireplace, stroking one of the living walls as he went to get Robin's attention, and began to stir the embers back to crackling life. 'What's got ye bothered, Robin?' he asked as he worked.   


_Friend! Friend-carer-friend,_ Robin chattered. A few months past, it'd picked up the habit of repeating itself, for the joy of hearing the words from what Aster could tell, and though it could get annoying, Aster hadn't yet worn through his patience for the day. _Hello! Hello!_   


'Did ye just want attention then?'   


_ Attention! Pets! But no. No no. Breeze for you. Breeze, breeze, breezy girl's breeze for you!   
_

'Em sent a message?'   


_ Message! Breeze! Both, here, for you, for you. _

Aster sighed. Em didn't often send messages to them, preferring to make the flight in person, but when she did, it was always important.   


'Give me a mo',' he said.   


_Breezy breezy breeze will wait. Waiting!_ A sound like branches clicking together in a high wind. _Pets? Pets?_

Aster rolled his eyes, but spent thirty seconds rubbing the smooth living wall fondly. Robin made a noise not unlike the call of its namesake, and subsided into happy humming. Aster left the room and went to the front door, which was rattling a tiny bit with the impatience of the wind behind it.

'What can I do ye for?' Aster asked, opening the door.   


'Well, for starts,' Emma's voice said flatly, 'you could actually answer the door within a decent time.'   


'The sun's just up,' Aster replied, and twitched an ear, even if she couldn't see it. 'Not exactly a lie in, was it?'   


'Don't sass me, it's too early in the morning.'   


'Me point.'   


'My brother's a terrible influence on you, you know.'   


'Still married him, didn't I?'   


'Thank god. You're the only one who'd put up with him.'   


'Reckon ye're talking about the wrong husband, here,' Aster said, and Emma laughed. 'What's got ye so awake this early, Em?'   


'Nothing bad,' Emma said, 'but we've got visitors. Thought you'd like to know.'   


'Visitors?' Aster repeated, frowning. 'Who?'   


'Well, visitors is such a strong word,' said a familiar voice, and Aster started.   


'Caroline? Ye should be halfway to Cirrus by now.'

'Got a quarter of the way when, well,' and Caroline's voice sounded like she was smiling, chitinous plates curving in a geometric grin. 'You never told us your town was so cute. And we never go anywhere without all of our important stuff on us, so we just – decided to stay.'

'Ye're staying?' Aster repeated, ears flicking up in surprise. 'Really? Ye – _really?_ '

'You sound so pleased,' Caroline replied dryly.   


'I am,' Aster said honestly. 'That's ace, Caroline. Is Consuela there, too?'

'Like I'd go anywhere without her,' she replied. 'Upstairs, asleep. Long trip.'

'I can imagine,' Aster said warmly. 'Do ye want us to stop by later today? Where are ye staying?'

'Toothiana's putting us up for a bit until we can figure out a house. A real house, Aster, which is so neat. No more caves for this mutt!'

Aster laughed. 'Then Jack and I'll be happy to come help.'

'What are you volunteering me for, now?' Jack asked, floating up and draping himself over Aster's shoulders, a warm mantle in the early November air. 'Hey, Em.'   


'Hi, Jack,' Emma said.   


'What's up?'   


'New neighbours!' Caroline chirped, and Jack started, dropping all of his weight onto Aster abruptly in his surprise.   


They went down in a tangle of limbs and shouts, nearly toppling down the stairs, as Emma and Caroline's voices chimed with merry laughter.   


'Todavía?' Jack sputtered out. Aster was just relieved he'd thought to throw pants on before coming out, and pushed him off.   


'Just Caroline, Everfrost,' Caroline replied. 'Cirrus won't miss us too bad.'   


'Wait, you're staying? Really?'   


'Deja vu,' Emma muttered.

'Yes, we're staying,' Caroline laughed. 'We've talked to your excitable mayor and everything. God, this place is great, you have no idea. So much livelier.'   


'Than a city?' Jack asked, sounding disbelieving. He hooked his arms under Aster's and lifted straight up, pulling Aster to his feet. 'There you go, sweetheart.'   


'You have no idea,' Caroline agreed.

'Thanks, love,' Aster said to Jack, dusting himself off, and then added to Caroline, 'So, ye never said if ye wanted us to stop by.'   


'Consuela would love to see you,' Caroline hummed. 'But I think she wants to come see you – she's obsessed with your tree house. I'm worried she's going to ask you to grow one for us.'   


'Not sure how I'd do that,' Aster chuckled, 'but if ye want to stop by, we'd be chuffed.'   


'We'll have lunch,' Jack piped up. 'Bun-bun makes the best raisin bread, you have to try it.'   


Aster rolled his eyes, but Caroline made noises of assent, and Emma spoke up again.   


'You two okay?'

Aster frowned, and glanced at Jack. 'Any reason we shouldn't be?'

'Padma said her mom went out late last night to your house. Neither of you are sick?'

'No, don't worry,' Jack said, voice brightly cheerful. 'She needed something from Aster, that's all.'   


'Okay, good,' Emma said, and a note of tension Aster hadn't realised was in her voice melted away. 'I'll talk to you soon!'   


'Bye, Em,' Jack yawned, and shooed the breeze away. He looked to Aster, and he was smiling brightly. 'So worth getting up early for.'   


'Like ye won't go back to bed, lazeabout,' Aster said fondly.

'You'd go back to bed, too,' Jack replied. 'It's not even dawn yet.'   


'Dawn isn't until seven or so,' Aster pointed out. 'I'll be getting up before dawn pretty often now, ye know that.'   


'Ugh, don't remind me,' Jack groaned. His smile remained, though, and he floated over, looping his arms over Aster's shoulders. Aster caught him around his waist, and tugged him near. 

'You're so warm, god,' Jack muttered. 'It's always cold when you leave bed.'   


'I'll get ye more blankets.'   


'You're better than any blanket.'   


Aster kissed Jack's cheek for that, and they stood there a moment more, in the pale light of the encroaching dawn.   


'Well, while I'm up,' Jack sighed, 'might as well feed the flock. I think we'll have another couple of lambs soon.'   


Aster smiled. 'The anklebiters are cute, I'll give ye that,' he said, and nuzzled Jack's temple. 'Go put on real clothes, ye bludger.'   


'Love you, too,' Jack laughed, and Aster kissed him again, because he was never going to get tired of those words in Jack's voice.   


'Go, and send for me when Todavía get here,' he said, pulling away.   


'Before you go,' Jack said and reached back into the house, retrieving Aster's green scarf; _must've grabbed it before heading down,_ Aster thought fondly. Jack shook out the folded knit fabric, and wrapped it around Aster's neck, tucking it securely in place. 'There,' he said, and gave Aster a grin that was as annoying as it was familiar. 'Has anyone told you that brings out your eyes?'   


'Only ye, a million times, since ye _dyed_ it that way,' Aster huffed. 'Got a lot of tickets on yerself, ye do.'   


'Can't blame me for that,' Jack said, and winked charmingly. 'If I managed to snag _you,_ I've gotta be cool shit.'   


Aster rolled his eyes, kissed him again, and pushed him back into the house. 'And don't go back to sleep!' he commanded.   


'No promises!' Jack sang back, and Aster had to huff. Husband and best friend and love of his life or not, Jack was always going to be a bit of an annoying ratbag.   


Aster pointedly ignored the way his face was split with his own smile, and left to begin re-stacking the woodpile.   
  
  


 

'It's lovely.'

Aster started, surprised, and turned; he'd been raking up the fallen leaves around the trees and hauling the piles in a wheelbarrow Nick had cobbled together last Chrissy to his compost pile. It left the rows of apple and nut trees neat and bare, grass gone brown and dry around the trunks, and in a bleak, simple way, he supposed it was.   


Mostly, though, he was surprised to hear Consuela's softly accented voice. The woman smiled at him gently, and set down onto the earth beside him.

'Thank ye,' Aster said. 'Thought Frostbite was going to tell me when ye came.'   


'I wanted to come myself,' she said. 'Hello again, Aster.'   


'It's good to see ye,' Aster said, smiling back. 'Thought we'd seen the last of ye two, to be honest.'   


'We thought the same,' Consuela admitted. 'We'd gone two weeks out when _cara mía_ turned to me and asked if I felt strange, returning to Cirrus. You know Caroline, _está seria pocas veces_ – rarely serious. I'd never seen her like that.' She shrugged, and her face had become thoughtful. 'To me, the place of my home is not so important, _te comprende?_ Since I met Caroline, _mi casa es está donde_ – my home is wherever she is. And she was not happy in Cirrus, I don't think.'   


Aster nodded seriously; as much as he loved Riverfield, as tied as he was to the roots and the river and the rich black dirt, if Jack said that he belonged elsewhere, Aster would follow.   


'She belongs here,' Consuela continued. 'I see you understand. And it will be good for her – to be her own person again, not half of one.'   


Aster frowned. 'What about ye? Will ye miss Cirrus?'   


'In some ways,' Consuela admitted. 'Several of the other mutts were from Aztlan. _La clima fue parecida._ The climate was alike. And we had some friends.' She shrugged. 'But I am a wanderer – _soy una viajera._ I am happy wherever I have use, and those I love are happy. For now – Riverfield. Who knows how long we will be here?'   


'True,' Aster said, and smiled again. 'Well, we're glad to have ye here, for however long ye are. Hope ye'll stick around a while.'   


'We were in Cirrus six years,' Consuela said, eyes twinkling. 'I'd be surprised if we weren't here longer.'   


Aster began to say – something, he later couldn't recall – when he heard a full-throated, feminine shriek.   


' _Put me down, oh my god – no, no, no, this was a terrible idea_ –' blended with Jack's beloved, familiar laugh, and Aster chuckled.

'Let's go before those two wreck me house,' he said, and set the rake aside. Consuela took to the air, radiating a summer-like warmth, and they walked back to Robin's roots, where Jack was laughing hysterically and holding onto a squirming Caroline.   


'Aster, get your husband to put me down!' she yelped. 'This is so weird – Consuela, help!'   


'Ye fly with Consuela all the time,' Aster said, eyebrow raised.   


'That is different – that's warm and _stable_ and _smooth_ – you put me down this _instant,_ Jack Frost!'   


Jack let go of her for a split second and she shrieked loud enough to shake Robin's needles before Jack caught her. 'Oops,' he said cheekily, and Aster rolled his eyes.   


'Don't torture the neighbours, love,' he said, and Jack descended slowly to earth, setting Caroline down first.   


'I could smack you right now!' she shouted at Jack, wobbling a bit in Aster's direction. 'No raisin bread is worth this!'   


'Ye've never had me raisin bread,' Aster said, laughing. 'Get down here, Frostbite. How long did ye give her before ye started up?'   


'I was a great host for five minutes,' Jack said, dropping to Aster's side. 'Way better than she should get, since she keeps calling me airhead. Which is not clever, by the way.' This last was directed to Caroline herself, who stuck out her tongue in response, a shock of pink against the black chitin of her face.

'Jack,' Aster said disapprovingly, and Jack elbowed him.

'Shut up, Bun-bun, we have to show a united front.'   


'Excellent, we can be united in the show of ye being a complete wanker.'   


'As long as it's united,' Jack said with a grin. 'Come on, food's on, and you skipped breakfast.' He frowned as he bustled the three of them up the stairs and into the house. 'Again. How did you live without me, before?'   


'Not nearly as well as I do now,' Aster replied, and earned himself an affectionate swat.

 

 

Caroline and Consuela settled into Riverfield with relatively little fanfare. Aster got so wrapped up in the work of preparing his farm for the winter and helping them build their home before the first snows that he forgot entirely Tooth's promise to return.   


It was a chill December afternoon, and he was cataloguing the dried inedible stores again. Jack had the memory of a squirrel when it came to writing down when he took out more dyes, so Aster spent a day once a season updating the inventory list he kept. Jack teased him incessantly about how exact he insisted on being ('How can you even judge point four of an ounce without a scale?' he'd exclaimed at one point), but he couldn't argue with the handy way they never ran out of something.   


The Wind tinkled at Aster's shoulder, and Aster flicked his left ear in answer; Jack's voice came burbling through a moment later.   


'Hey, Bun-bun.'   


'Yeah?'   


'Come on up from the cellar, we've got a visitor.'   


'Ye know,' Aster said mildly, 'before I married ye, I had people on me farm maybe once a year – twice, if the harvest was early enough.'   


'That's a lie,' Jack replied, full of cheer. 'We had Emma over like once a week when we were just living in a den of depravity.'   


Aster rolled his eyes. 'Lemme amend that. I had people on me farm once a year before I shacked up with ye at all.'   


'And now your life is richer and fuller for the company, no need to thank me,' Jack answered loftily, making Aster huff in laughter. 'Seriously, though, hurry up. It's Tooth.'   


'She out of the poppies again?'   


'No, she's here for – you know.'   


Aster flicked his ears again, surprised. 'Now? Thought this was one of those late night things. Tooth does love her dramatics.'

'I can _hear_ you,' Tooth's voice sniffed, and Aster laughed again.   


'Were ye going to tell me she was right there, Snowbird?'   


'Not a chance. Hurry up.'   


The Wind ended the message with a tinkle, and squirmed her way under the knotted green scarf. He chuckled, returned her nuzzling as best he could, and left the root cellar dug around Robin's massive roots.

He entered the house to laughter, and when he stuck his head in the living room, he could see why.   


'Ye also didn't mention she brought prezzies,' Aster said dryly, eyeing the massive bag Tooth had open next to her.   


'I find it's easier to talk when my hands have something to do,' Tooth replied, fluttering into the air and over to Aster. 'Good to see you, Bunny.'   


'Likewise,' he said, and returned her hug. 'What'd ye bring?'   


'More yarn than she should be able to carry,' Jack said, flying over, too, and catching Tooth and Aster in a hug before she could dart away. Aster rolled his eyes, but Tooth seemed content to hug them both, so he took it with good grace.   


'I do have quite the stash, though this is hardly all of it,' Tooth admitted, pulling away at last. 'Feel free to comb through it, Jack.'

'Sure,' Jack said, eyes gleaming, and tried to fly casually over to the bag. His excitement was betrayed, however, by the speed with which he went.   


'So easy to make happy, your husband,' Tooth said, patting Aster's arm.   


'Pretty easy to upset, too,' Aster replied, smiling. 'Watch – oi, Frostbite, ye're almost out of the red dye.'   


'I'm _what?!'_ Jack exclaimed, torn away from his yarn daze. 'Fuck, are you serious? How am I going to finish North's gift now?!'   


'See, what'd I tell ye,' Aster muttered to Tooth, who was hiding a smile behind her hands. 'And she'll be apples, Jack, but yer little project's going to wipe ye out 'til spring.'   


'Don't _do_ that, Aster,' Jack sighed, relieved. 'I almost had a heart attack.'   


'Ye'd know already if ye'd use me list.'   


'I do use your list, I just don't mess with it. If I didn't record it to within a tenth of an ounce, you'd turn me into a tree, or something.'

'A tree? Ye aren't big enough to be a tree. A shrub, maybe.'   


'A shrub – a shrub?!'   


'Maybe a large lilac bush. At best.'

Tooth was laughing helplessly now, bent in half in the air and drifting downwards as her attention turned away from her flight. Aster gave her a gentle push back towards the chair, and she went, gasping in great lungfuls of air.   


'Come on,' Jack wheedled. 'Not even like a little tree? Throw me a bone here, Aster.'   


'Pends on how badly ye messed up me list,' Aster said thoughtfully, sitting on the couch and watching contentedly as Jack dug through Tooth's yarn. 'If ye bodged it up too well...' he considered Jack, thinking of the trees in the root system he'd gotten to know. 'A birch. Yellow birch.'   


'I'll take it,' Jack said, holding up a goldenrod-yellow yarn with glee, followed by a soft, sky blue. 'These two. These are perfect. Sandy's going to have the best hat this year...'   


'Speaking of,' Tooth said, fishing out her own knitting – a complex looking blanket, Aster thought, but he was no knitter himself – 'I think I promised you Sandy's story this time, yes?'   


'What about _your_ story?' Jack asked suspiciously.   


Tooth shook her head. 'I realised that I started in the wrong place. To know why I came to Riverfield, you have to know how Riverfield came to be. Now hush. Go sit by your husband, he looks cold.'   


Jack looked at Aster, who shrugged. Tooth shot him a glare, and Aster sighed before shivering theatrically. 'Brr,' he added, flat as the plains, and Jack laughed before flying over, taking a quick detour to snag his own knitting basket. He settled down along Aster's side, digging out his silvery double pointed needles. Aster smiled at the sight of them, and the brown project dangling from them. Apparently it was for the Bennets girl, who was turning six in January.   


'You two,' Tooth sighed, sounding fond and exasperated and amused all at once. 'Let me begin. Sandy was born in 1977...'


	4. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sandy, my darling. I am sorry (but thank goodness you are a thing, I adore you)

'Sandy was born in 1977, in a town called Easton, in a state called Massachusetts. This is the Before, mind you; Sandy says the End came in 1984. I've heard otherwise, but I trust Sandy's time-keeping; he's writing a book, did you know? Yes, a book about the Before, and the End. He's let me read the introduction – it's very good.

'Anyway, Sandy was born Sanderson Mansnoozie to a single mother. He told me what he could remember of her; she wasn't blond, but dark haired, and she had skin a little darker than Theold's. She was tall, and kind, and had a nice voice. She sang to him. All of his memories are those of a child, but it was easier to remember when – well, as he talked he remembered more. Thank goodness for the telepathy, or it might have taken a very long time for me to get the whole story!

'He was seven when the End came. His mother had gone to work that morning, and dropped him off at school. He never saw her again. He spent a long time sad about it, but now, he said he's happy that the last time he saw her, she was glad. She'd kissed him and told him she loved him, like she did every morning, and wished him luck. That's a good last memory to have of someone.

'He took the bus home – like the big vehicles you occasionally see in caravans? The big metal ones, they used to be used for moving lots of people at once, hence all the windows. He was supposed to go to a caretaker's home for the afternoon, but Sandy was a... precocious child, we'll say. He didn't want to go to the day care. He wanted to stay home, eat cookies, watch television.

'Television? Well, the way Sandy described it, it was like a box that you watched people on – they would show plays and there would be parts where they showed the news. A man would read you what was going on in the world, and everyone could watch the same thing at the same time. His mother had been very proud when she brought one home in black and white, and it was one of Sandy's favourite things.

'And so Sandy, little seven-year-old Sandy, watched the world End.

'It was on every channel he could find – oh, there were different sorts of, er, well, think of them as going to different theatres, something different playing at each one. Only every single one was talking about the same thing. Something had happened to the ocean, something had come from the sky – a great light, a deadly wave of something. Sandy was frightened by it, as you can well imagine. Everyone looked so serious.

'He recalls being very worried that he hadn't gone to his day care, that his mother would be angry. He didn't know at the time precisely what was wrong, but he tried to call his mother. On a telephone – sort of like your Wind, Jack. Only they came in little boxes of metal, and most people had them. Well, I imagine it was like trying to run more than one Wind at a time – all the lines were busy. Panic everywhere.

'So Sandy stayed home. He's put together what must have happened by now. His mother worked in the city a drive away – Boston, then, but we know it now as Saorsa. There were riots. You two are very lucky, to have never seen a riot. I have, and it wasn't – it wasn't pretty. Fires everywhere, buildings burning, people screaming. Crowds of angry, violent,  _ scared _ people. Breaking into stores and buildings, guns going off, and – it's uncontainable. It's fear what did it. Sandy doesn't think his mother ever made it out of the city; she would have come back to him if she had. But the days turned into a week, and then two, and no one came.

'The rioting came to Easton. Sandy hid in his house. He ate the food in the cupboards until there wasn't any more. Then he went to his neighbour's house and stole food. They weren't there.

'The streets grew quiet. People had fled the city, the town, all looking for somewhere safe to be. The radiation came. The Change came.

'Sandy could speak when he was a child, he told me. He can remember having a voice. It went away when he got sick with the radiation, and never came back, though he didn't notice for a while – he didn't have anyone to speak to, after all. He didn't look like he does now, either. His hair was dark, like his mother's, though his skin was paler. That was the Change.

'One day, he realised that he could move sand. He had taken to wandering the streets at that point, scavenging for food and other things; the only other people in Easton at that point were either dead, or scavenging like him. None of them helped him. He didn't want their help. But he was down by the lake near the orchard, and though he knew now not to drink the water – the radiation was in everything but the bottled water, now, and even that was getting low – he wanted to play for a minute. He didn't understand radiation back then. He thought if he didn't eat it, it wouldn't hurt him.

'He was playing in the sand – for all that he'd grown up quickly, he was still a child. Then he realised it was moving. He didn't think it was strange, so much as it was amazing. It was the first spot of happiness he remembers having after the End. He could make it float, could make it into shapes, and move it like it was a television picture come to life. He could carry about a pound of it in the air at once, and so he went home with his new prize.

'That prize - well, the discovery of his gift, not the sand itself - it saved his life.

'He'd been living in his childhood home since the End, afraid to leave in case his mother returned. But when he saw flickering lights down the street he lived on, he was frightened.

'A group of raiders and scavengers were torching the whole street. He doesn't know why they did that. He thinks they were maybe drunk, maybe young and grieving and destructive with it, but it didn't matter. If he hadn't stopped to play with the sand, to find out more about it, he would have been in the house when it caught fire. He sneaked away, his only possessions now his sand and his bag with his treasures in it.

'Oh, he didn't go anywhere without his important things – smart child. He kept a picture of his mother, and the book she would sing to him out of, and the little knife he kept for cutting through the wrapping of food, and a metal canteen he'd found in a shop he'd been scavenging through. He still has them, you know. The picture, and the book, at least, but he hasn't looked at them in years. They're very fragile, now, so he keeps them safe in a box in a secret panel in the library.

'Apparently, he put them in himself. Jack, don't give me that look. Well, if you'd wanted to find secret things, you should have spent more time in the library!

'Aster, don't try to help him. I've heard about  _ your _ bookworm tendencies, so it's both your faults for not exploring the library more fully. And besides, I don't think Sandy would like you pawing over his things – no, Jack, don't laugh, I didn't mean it like that!

'Goodness, you two. I'm not even halfway through. Bunny, settle your husband down.

'Much better. Now, where was – right. He sneaked away, to the west; he walked for a very long time. He doesn't remember how much time passed. It grew cold, at least. The years after the End were much colder than they are now. He remembers that his eighth birthday passed during that time, then his ninth. When it snowed, he stole warm clothing and things from abandoned houses; when it was warm, he slept in the trees; and he avoided anyone he came across.

'Why? Well, the poor dear had found out he couldn't talk anymore. That first night away from his home, he cried, and there wasn't any sound. He tried to talk, and nothing came out. He tried to sing or hum, and there was just – nothing. He was scared of what someone would say, or how he'd explain himself, so he kept quiet and hid whenever he saw other people.

'Eventually, though, he was seeing more corpses than he was seeing living, breathing mutts – though, I suppose the adults weren't mutts at all, and most children would have been with parents or caretakers, or – well. Apparently, there were roving bands of children in those early days. Joined together to keep themselves safe, and the older ones helped care for the younger.

'Sandy didn't get picked up by any of those, though some tried. He always ran. And the kids he did see – well, he thought at last that perhaps he was becoming a little strange. All of his hair had slowly turned gold, and his skin was darker, a deep yellow. He'd scared himself when he'd gone to cross a river and caught sight of his own eyes – as yellow as the rest of him! They'd been brown before. But there were kids he saw who were just as strange as him, if not stranger – kids who looked like they had  _ fur _ , or feathers, or extra limbs or eyes, and some even glowed in strange colours. Even the ones who looked normal did strange things, like jumping up too high or running too fast. It was frightening.

'He learned he could do something to light – make it brighter or darker. He used it to hide. And so he wandered.

'Eventually, he found his way to these mountains. He'd passed through other mountain ranges, following shattered and abandoned highways, and through more destroyed and empty towns that he can remember. He walked and walked and walked, until something caught his eye.

'It was a whole window, unbroken and glinting in the light. It was set in a large building, brick and stone and old-fashioned ever back then, set to the left of a thick but poorly paved road, with a few small houses on either side of the street. The smallest town Sandy had ever seen, and it looked like they'd all up and left together. None of the doors were broken in, all of the windows were whole and dusty; it was almost as if there'd never been an End here at all, only a little vacation.

'The only door that was unlocked was that of the building that first had caught his eye, and he entered it to find... well, Sandy wasn't very articulate about it all. He spent twenty minutes telling me about it before he even got around to the word library. It was a treasure to him, whole and almost completely untouched, and he decided then and there that he was never going to leave it.

'Big words for a nine year old – especially one who hadn't been the best reader in his class, or even the middle of the class. But I think it was a sort of comfort to him, that something hadn't changed, that these wouldn't change.

'He spent four years alone after that, and the books – the books saved him. They taught him how to hunt and fish, even if many of the animals from the Before had died off. Imagine then, how surprised he was when other survivors came to his library!

'It was a small group – six adults, and four children, all a little younger than Sandy. They were passing through, he thought, when they saw his fire in the fireplace of the library. They weren't  raiders, just wanderers. Two couples, a pair of unmatched adults, and three girls, one boy. They were as surprised to find Sandy as he was to have them appear on his doorstep, and when they realised he couldn't speak but could write, they managed to get some of his story from him. He was much more interested in theirs, though, and they were happy to trade their story for a warm place to stay the night.

'They were a group from out in New Hampshire, a state from the Before, and they were travelling west to find a safe place to settle. Only one of the children belonged to a couple – the two unattached adults, Sandy realised, who looked like they didn't like each other very much – but they had taken them in, and were raising them as best they were able. It had gotten a lot harder, they said, when all four had developed strange powers. One of the girls could see in the dark and much farther than she should be able; another of the girls could walk on water, and the last could pick up any of the adults over her head. But the boy –

'Well, the boy could do something extraordinary, even in comparison with the other three. He could create images and sounds and colours from  _ nothing, _ apparently. A very strange child of four, who used to smile and laugh but now only stared sullenly at the ground and spoke to no one.

'Sandy could sympathise, and when the next morning the adults asked if he would be alright with them settling nearby, he thought of the little boy, and nodded.

'They weren't the last group of survivors to come to the town, though. Sandy thinks the river, which comes from a mountain spring, drew them in. The ground was rich and the plants strong, game not quite plentiful but enough that there was food, and to his surprise, people kept asking him for help.  _ Him, _ a young boy, not even a man yet, and unable to talk, to boot! But the books in his library could teach them and help them, and so he shared the knowledge. Soon, there were almost a hundred people in Riverfield, and while it was hard to be happy in the aftermath of the End, most were content.

'Not so was the little boy, now six. His name was Ombric, Sandy had learned, and he was not so much sullen as he was – neglected.

'His parents had gotten together after the End, and their relationship was – at best – a passionless partnership. Ombric himself had been an accident, and when he developed his gift so early, it was even more of a strain on his parents. Sandy admits that he disliked them, though he also said he was little more than a teenager at the time, and certainly didn't understand all of the circumstances. What he knew was that Ombric was a lonely little boy, without friends due to the strangeness of his gift, and without care from his parents.

'Sandy believed that to be unacceptable, and so, newly sixteen, Sandy launched his plan.

'Ombric began to spend time at the library while his parents worked in their garden or hunted, and Sandy would watch him. Sandy is very, very fond of Ombric – thinks of him almost as a son, apparently, though it's hard to imagine Sandy as anyone's parent sometimes! He's so cheerful and light-hearted that this story was very hard to hear; it's hard to hear of anyone suffering. But little bit by little bit, Ombric began to open up to Sandy. And, goodness, wasn't he a bright thing!

'Sandy taught him to read, to do maths; he taught Ombric how to use his gift, mimicking what Ombric could do with his sand and his light, and they found out that Ombric's gift was so much greater than lights and colours and sound – Ombric could create illusions, anything he could think up. They read every book in that library together, as far as I can tell, and life was a peaceful, quiet thing.

'Then the raiders came, and more importantly, with them came North. But that's where we'll end for today, I think.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TOOTH YOU CAN'T JUST SAY SHIT LIKE THAT AND THEN STOP


	5. Intermission: Histories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand we're back to the NSFW. And also, a surprise pairing (I say as if you lot didn't see it coming way back in chapter 23~ish of PA)!

'No, you can't stop there!' Jack exclaimed, blue eyes wide and knitting long abandoned. 'You were just getting to the good part!'

'You're going to do this every time, aren't you,' Tooth sighed.

Aster bit back his own intense curiosity; it had grown dark outside, though it was doing that earlier and earlier as Midwinter (Christmas, according to North, who loved the holiday with an unholy glee) drew nearer. It would be bitterly cold, and Tooth no doubt wanted to make it home before it got too late.

'If you keep insisting on stopping at the interesting parts, yes I am!' Jack said, hotly, but subsided at Aster's warning look.

Tooth smiled at them. 'There's a little more I need to know before I tell you the next part,' she said, apology in every line of her face. 'I don't know when Nick will tell me, though, so I can't make promises on when I'll return.'

'Thank ye for as much as ye've told us,' Aster said. 'And thank the others for us, would ye? These – these sound like they must be difficult to talk about, and I'm grateful.'

'We've all got our histories,' Tooth said, 'and sometimes it's easier to rely on someone else to tell them for us.'

Aster thought that might be why she had taken a more circuitous route in her telling, to put off her own story for some time, but kept the thought to himself.

'Alright, Bunny,' she said, having tucked away her yarn once more while Aster had been thinking. 'I'm off.'

'I'll take ye back into town, it's early yet,' he said, standing. 'Jack, we'll need some more wood for tonight, and don't forget to lock up the flock. Judevine's been figuring out the latch, so do it tight.'

'We need to make a better lock for them,' Jack said, rolling his eyes. 'I don't know what they think is so awesome outside their nice, warm pen, but they're determined to find out.'

'I'll talk to Theold while I'm there,' Aster promised, and kissed Jack's forehead. Jack rolled his eyes, but kissed Aster's chin back.

'You do that. Say hi to North and Em, too, or they'll kick your ass – and don't forget Todavía! _And_ when you get home, you're helping with dinner. Don't think I've forgotten the lilac bush, asshole.'

'Love ye, too.'

'Always,' Jack returned, his grin turning bright, and Aster turned away and held out a paw for Tooth's bag. She passed it over with a smile, and Aster shouldered it before leading the way out of the house.

'It's so lovely to see you two after everything,' Tooth said after ten minutes of an easy, companionable silence. She could keep up with his easiest lope, so they were a third of the way back to town; Aster flicked his ears over in confusion.

'What do ye mean? Did something happen?'

'No – oh, that's not what I meant,' Tooth said placatingly. 'I meant that – well, the two of you are so good together. We worried about that, you know, when you two left. That you'd come home and the enforced time together would have broken you apart. We had no idea how badly the trip would go, of course.'

'Of course,' Aster said, a little amused; two years was enough distance to find polite references to what had happened a little amusing.

'But that just makes it so much more impressive, I think,' Tooth continued. 'That you two are so... settled. That's a good word, I think. You don't hardly ever fight, even!'

'Oh, we fight, don't worry about that.'

'Not about big things,' she insisted. 'And not seriously.'

Aster wanted to argue, but he honestly couldn't recall the last time he and Jack had gotten into a real out-and-out blue since – well, since Pitch. 'Is that... strange?'

'Yes, but it's not bad,' Tooth assured. 'It's just lovely to see.'

'I don't think we're doing anything differently from anyone else,' Aster said, frowning. 'We just – talk. Honestly. Only secrets we try to keep are little things, and if we aren't comfortable talking about something, we say so.'

'That you think that is unimpressive is sort of sad, Bunny,' she said. 'But endearing! Very endearing!'

'Oh, belt up,' Aster huffed, and Tooth laughed.

They arrived in the town a short while later, and he walked with her to the hospital. 'It was good to see ye, Tooth,' he said once they'd reached the door. 'Ye can come over any time. Even without a story, though I can't guarantee Jack won't bug ye about it, the tosser.'

Tooth chuckled. 'Thank you, Aster,' she said, and hugged him tightly. 'You've really come very far. Both of you. In a good way, of course.'

'Well, thank ye,' Aster said, twitching his ears embarrassedly; he never _had_ done well with praise of any kind.

'Say hello to Emma for me,' Tooth said, and opened the door.

Out bounced Emma herself, looking chuffed as she ever had, and Tooth squeaked, surprised.

'Whoops! Hi, Tooth!' Emma said, her eyes sparkling madly. 'Sorry, didn't see you there!'

'It's alright, dear,' Tooth said, patting Emma's shoulder. 'Visiting Padma?'

Emma nodded, her cheeks going a little pink in the cold air of the outside. 'Yep, but Grandfather wanted me home a while ago. Gotta go!'

She darted around Tooth and Aster both before making her way quickly down the street.

'What on earth was that about?' Tooth wondered aloud.

Aster smiled; he had his suspicions, but he'd not voice them before Emma had a chance to do so. 'Not sure,' he said instead, and gave Tooth a nod. 'Have a good night, Tooth.'

'You too, Bunny,' she replied, smiling again, and went into the hospital, shutting the door behind her. Aster waited for a moment, grinning, and the door flew open again. 'I forgot my yarn!'

'I know ye did,' he said, and passed the bag back to her. 'There ye go.'

'Your husband is a terrible influence,' she said, wagging her finger, and shut the door again.

Aster, laughing softly to himself, went to Theold's.

  
  


'Oh, for _fuck's_ sake.'

Aster huffed out a laugh, and looked away from what he was doing to see Jack glaring at a dropped stitch two rows back. Jack looked up, and now his glare was for Aster.

'Don't laugh at _me,_ Mr. I-Dropped-My-Water-Jar-And-Splattered-My-Painting.'

'It turned out alright, though,' Aster replied, looking back to the panel and eyeing it critically. 'Thank god it wasn't a watercolour, mind ye.'

'You're such a pain in my ass,' Jack sighed, beginning to carefully unravel his yarn.

Aster waited until he caught Jack's eye again, and cocked his eyebrow. 'I could be, if ye wanted,' he said intently.

Jack sputtered out a laugh, the way he always did when Aster made an intentionally awful joke, and Aster grinned, pleased with himself. Jack laughing was always going to be preferable to Jack frowning, no matter how fetching his frown could be.

'You've got your I-love-you face on,' Jack said, setting aside his knitting and floating over to hover above Aster, nearly nose to nose. 'What's on your mind, Cottontail?'

'I'd like to have ye always laughing, that's all,' Aster said truthfully. 'I've always thought that. If I can keep ye laughing, then I've done me job right.'

Jack's eyes were shining now, his expression soft. 'Romantic one until the casket drops, sweetheart.' He brushed his nose over Aster's lovingly. 'It'd be annoying, if it wasn't so amazing.'

'Hush, ye,' Aster replied, but he returned the nuzzle. 'Now go fix yer knitting. Chrissy's next week, and North's socks won't finish themselves.'

'They can wait,' Jack said, taking Aster's paws and pulling him to his feet. 'You can't.'

'I can't what?' Aster said, confused.

'Wait,' Jack explained, looping his arms around Aster's neck. 'Or did you forget already? Jeez, old man, it's only been a few minutes.'

Aster swallowed as Jack dropped to the ground. The difference in their heights, so often not a problem at all given how Jack flew like he breathed, was suddenly very pronounced, and Jack grinned up at him, unrepentant.

'And what kind of a husband would I be,' Jack said, fluttering his eyelashes, 'if I couldn't distract you from a piddling painting with the promise of –'

Robin made a loud shifting noise, like branches knocking together, and Jack sighed. He couldn't talk to plants, but with Aster serving as an intermediary, he and the redwood had come up with some simple communications, and this was Robin's way of saying he needed their attention.

'Always before the good part,' Jack snorted, and tilted his head back further, eyeing the ceiling. 'What's up, Robin Redbreast?'

With Aster translating (biting back his own laughter at the frustrated look on Jack's face), Robin relayed, _bird! Bird girl, green green purple green bird girl for my Jack boy! At the door, at the door!_

'Baby Tooth?' Jack said, looking at Aster in surprise. 'Do you think something's wrong?'

Now Aster was biting back his laughter for a completely different reason. 'No, but ye should let her in,' he said reasonably. 'Might be important, anyway.'

Jack gave Aster a suspicious look, but stepped away. 'We are picking this up later,' he said, and somehow managed to make the promise of sex sound distantly threatening.

'And keep ye from yer knitting? I could never,' Aster said, mockingly aghast.

Jack laughed, free and delighted, and went to answer the door.

A moment later, he returned, accompanied now by Baby Tooth, who was fiddling with one of the long feathers of her crest self-consciously and darting her bright purple gaze between the two of them like she expected one of them to explode into flames at any second. Aster stifled his smile, because he suspected he knew _precisely_ why she had come for a visit – and why she was so nervous.

Baby Tooth drew nearer, holding out a hand for each of them, and Aster took her delicate fingers in his paw.

_I'm sorry not to tell you I was coming,_ she said, and her nerves flooded over Aster, her empathy as uncontrollable as her telepathy once they touched. Through her, distant, he could feel Jack's confusion, and he had to fight hard against a chuckle when Jack gave him a strange look, no doubt sensing Aster's amusement.

'It's fine,' Jack said, and dropped his suspicious view of Aster to smile at her encouragingly. 'What's up, Baby Tooth?'

_For the last time, it's PADMA,_ she huffed. _I'm sixteen, I'm not a baby anymore._

'No, ye're not,' Aster reassured her. 'What's going on, Padma?'

She gave him a smile that wobbled a little at the edges, the way her nerves surged back up. _I came to ask permission,_ she said, and Aster could feel her gathering her courage, and tried his hardest to think warmly and brightly, so as to help her. _To – to date Emma._

Jack jerked a bit, his surprise a distant, bright blue flare in Aster's mind. Baby Tooth focussed on him, her nerves intensifying, and Aster let himself smile; neither of them would notice, the way they were.

'You want to _what?'_ Jack said, eyes wide. 'You and – Em? Really?'

_Yes,_ Baby Tooth confirmed, nodding surely despite her anxiety. _She's – I don't know how to say it,_ she sighed a little helplessly.

'Like this?' Aster said, and thought as hard as he could about the way his chest tightened whenever Jack laughed, when he spoke to the plants even though he couldn't hear their responses, whenever Jack was himself and Aster had the privilege of seeing it.

The emotion sang a brilliant green in his head, loud enough that Jack's already wide eyes went still wider, and Baby Tooth nodded emphatically.

_Exactly, just –_ and the emotion that sang back to him was paler but no less strong, less green and more blue, like a tropical sea. _Like that._

Aster nodded back, understanding, and Jack was sending each of them surprised stares in irregular intervals, as if every few seconds he changed his mind about which of the two was more crazy.

'But _Emma?'_ Jack repeated. 'My little sister, Emma?'

'Yes, Emma,' Aster said impatiently, giving Jack a strong Look. 'Has been Emma since we came home. And ye say _I'm_ oblivious.'

'No way,' Jack breathed, and Baby Tooth flinched. 'No, wait, not about that,' Jack explained hastily, 'it's just – you're serious? Emma?'

Baby Tooth tossed her head, like a nervous horse. _Yes, Emma,_ she said, parroting Aster unconsciously. _We've been – um. For a year? We just want – we want it to be official. With her family, and mine._

'Have you talked to North?'

_Not yet,_ Baby Tooth admitted. _I thought I'd get the hard one out of the way._

'The hard one?' Jack said, looking thunderstruck. _'Me?_ Have you _met_ North? Why am I the hard one?'

_Because there's two of you,_ Baby Tooth replied, and looked at Aster.

'Wait, me?' Aster blinked. 'Ye don't need permission from me.'

_Yes, I do,_ Baby Tooth said stubbornly. _From her whole family. I want to be with Emma, and this is the right way to do it._

Aster didn't know quite what he was feeling. On the one hand, of course Emma was part of his family – she was his sister-in-law, and his sister in all but blood. On the other, he'd never thought  – well, he'd never _had_ a sister. He hadn't thought what that might mean.

'You want to be with Emma?' Jack asked, and his tone said quite clearly that he wasn't just repeating this because he was confused.

_ Yes. More than anything. _

'You'll take care of her? Try to not hurt her?'

_ I'd never hurt her! _

'You can't promise that, Padma,' Jack said, looking serious. 'Even if you love someone, you can hurt them.' There was the strange, acid-wash-pink of guilt that emanated from Jack, and Aster reached out, taking Jack's free hand with his paw.

_I suppose,_ Baby Tooth admitted. _But I can promise that I'll try?_

'That's good enough for me,' Jack said, nodding. 'And I'm not going to threaten you, I'll leave that to North. You're like a little sister to me, anyway, and I'd hate to have to do anything to you if it goes badly.'

_It won't,_ Baby Tooth said, sounding as sure of this as any sixteen-year-old could, and turned to Aster.

'Still don't reckon I know why ye're asking _me,'_ Aster said, shuffling a bit. 'Em's her own person, it's her decision. Just...' He sighed.

Baby Tooth tilted her head at him, mimicking Jack's movement at the precise moment he made it, and Aster felt a wave of fondness, looking at the both of them.

'When I was the tree,' Aster said, 'She came every day. She had known me for maybe a total of – what, eight days, nine? – before that happened. Jack was laid up, and she still made the time, every day, to walk out here, and talk to me.'

He hadn't really ever talked about what it was like to have been the tree, and both Baby Tooth and Jack watched him avidly as he spoke. 'I couldn't understand anything she said,' Aster continued, 'but her voice was there the entire time. She was the one who said Jack's name the first time, the one who gave me back the way to remember who and what I was. Jack was the one who led me out, but it was Emma who pointed the way. All this for a practical stranger, when she was still so young and hurting.'

He shook his head. 'What I'm trying to say, Padma, is that Emma is a good person, and so are ye. Just – try to take care of that, alright? Not a lot of people around like ye two, and if ye make each other happy, then I reckon there shouldn't be a damn thing anybody says to stop ye.'

Baby Tooth swallowed, and clutched at Aster's paw. _Thank you,_ she said, and the sincerity in her shone a blazing white in Aster's mind.

'You need to stop being the better big brother, for fuck's sake,' Jack said, managing to sound both frustrated and impressed at once. Aster huffed in laughter. 'So, what he said,' Jack turned to Baby Tooth, and grinned wide. 'And this means I get to call you Baby Tooth _forever,_ because now you're _really_ my little sister.'

Baby Tooth emanated a deep annoyance that only just managed to cover up the softly pulsing love. _Thank you,_ she said, and when Jack tugged her into a hug, Aster let her go.

A few minutes later she'd left, and Jack turned a betrayed look on Aster. 'You knew the whole time?'

'I suspected, since we came home,' Aster admitted easily. 'Given the way Emma went as pink as a sunrise and they've been attached at the hip ever since.'

'And you never thought to mention it?'

'Reckoned it was something they'd talk about in their own time,' Aster shrugged.

Jack scowled. 'You could have _told_ me my sister was seeing someone!'

'Well,' Aster hedged, 'ye're always saying how I couldn't see a budding romance if it danced in front of me, so there was a bit of – er.'

'You didn't tell me because you wanted to rub it in my face?' Jack said, and to Aster's confusion, he looked delighted. 'Ha! I _have_ rubbed off on you!'

Aster rolled his eyes. 'Ye shouldn't be so proud of that,' he advised. 'Come on, ye need to finish those socks, or I'll never hear the end of it.'

'Don't think I forgot about earlier,' Jack said, his grin going a little manic.

'Bit of a mood spoiler, though,' Aster pointed out, flicking his right ear towards the door.

Jack made a face, but conceded defeat. 'Later, though?'

'Jack,' Aster said, looking at his husband. 'Have I ever said no to that?'

Jack's grin returned full force, and took Aster's paw again. 'Alright, let's go get our stuff done,' he agreed, and Aster couldn't help his own, answering smile.

  
  


Aster gulped, swallowing down air and saliva and his own heart, it felt like, as Jack began to shift down, Aster's cock pressed just within the ring of slicked up muscles. 'Jack,' Aster whispered, holding still because Jack had asked, but craving movement.

Jack worked himself down another inch or two, eyes closed and throat moving soundlessly. His thighs were a pale cage around Aster's, and trembled a little bit with the effort of holding steady. His hand was tangled in the thick fur of Aster's chest, and his other was braced on Aster's knee. It was a marvel of coordination, of corded muscle and sweat-slicked skin, and Aster groaned a little as Jack dropped one inch more.

'Slow and steady,' Jack panted, 'wins the race, Bun-bun.'

Aster had a retort on his tongue – about how Jack's glacial pace certainly made him _seem_ like a tortoise, or something like that – but he lost it in the way Jack slid the rest of the way down, slow indeed but inexorable, and then he couldn't recall any word at all. The way Jack's body was tucked into the curve of his own, arse squarely against Aster's hips and the long, damp planes of his back leaning against Aster's thighs, left him breathless. Aster's own back was braced against the headboard, his knees pulled up at Jack's direction; this whole situation was one hundred percent Jack's vision. He'd arranged Aster just so, as if following a mental checklist, and now he levered himself forward, shifting his body around Aster's cock to lay against his furred chest.

'Always wanted to do it this way,' Jack said softly into Aster's neck, voice muffled by the fur and his hard breathing both. 'You, all around, and inside, and just – god, _just_ like that, sweetheart,' he groaned as Aster shifted his hips up. 'Again, come on, come _on_ –'

Aster wordlessly followed Jack's plea, paws settling behind Jack's hips and pressing Jack down to meet him, the wet heat like –

It wasn't really like anything else, never had been, and Jack's hands twisted into Aster's fur, twisted into claws, the nails just managing to pinch at the skin beneath. Aster swallowed again, his feet braced against the bed as he thrust up, and it seemed like Jack had run out of words too, judging by his silence.

Jack bit unexpectedly at Aster's shoulder, harder than he usually did, and when Aster realised it had been to muffle a scream, he was _lost._ He came once, hips jerking arrhythmically, and Jack made the muffled sound again.

'No, don't do that,' Aster managed, his mind clearing some even as he began to thrust up in short strokes again. 'Lemme hear ye, Snowbird.'

Jack let go with his teeth, and when he spoke, it was hoarse. 'Fuck, Aster,' he managed. 'Don't _talk_ right now, I can't take it –'

'Take what?' Aster asked, and punctuated the question with a rolling of his hips that left his thighs aching. It made Jack yell a bit, still quieter than he should, and Aster rubbed his thumbs over the dips in muscle above Jack's ass. He'd long ago memorised just where they were. 'Who's going to hear ye, other than me?' he urged, returning to the smooth rhythm of before. 'I _want_ to hear ye. I love when ye get like this –'

'Aster,' Jack breathed, and moaned when Aster palmed his cock. 'A-Aster, I –'

'Ye're so mouthy, so quick,' Aster interrupted, because Jack's eyes were getting more and more glazed with every pump of his hips and pull of his paw, and Aster couldn't not encourage that. 'Always have the last word, so clever – and then ye just lose it, like I took all the words out of yer mouth –'

'I –'

'So talk to me,' Aster said, leaning up, driving deeper, stroking faster. 'I know ye can do it, words or no. Let me _hear_ ye.'

Jack's hips slammed down against Aster's, his back arched, and the noise that left Jack's throat had half the syllables of Aster's name and half a note of windsong as he came thunderously over Aster's paw.

The tight fluttering of his insides demanded an answer, and Aster came in return, muscles spasming in his thighs and abdomen as his vision went a blinded grey.

Jack slumped atop him, breath coming in harsh gasps and gulps, like he couldn't get enough air. His weight pinned Aster to the headboard, and he made a soft noise as Aster's knees relaxed, leaving him flat on Aster's lap.

'That,' Jack said at last, 'was cheating.'

'What?' Aster said, his brain dribbling back in bits and pieces.

'The – the talking, the dirty talking,' Jack replied, voice softly hoarse. 'Not fair. I'm pretty sure you could talk me into coming, you asshole.'

'I'm pretty sure ye're the only person on the planet who gets mad when I give ye an orgasm,' Aster muttered dryly, but he could feel the heat of his blush creeping up to his ears.

'I'm the only person you give orgasms to, so I'd say you're _really_ sure,' Jack said, fingers petting through Aster's fur. Aster went to jostle himself free, and Jack shook his head. 'No, I like this,' he explained at Aster's look. 'You'll leave in a minute anyway, let me just – enjoy this.'

They sat there some time more; Aster wasn't sure how long. He did indeed retreat back into his sheath, which had them both groaning at the over-sensitive motion, but he had to agree with Jack. It was kind of nice.

'Always laughing, huh,' Jack said at last, and kissed the corner of Aster's mouth.

'Well, the job has other duties,' Aster said, 'but that's one of them.'

'Don't worry, you do perfectly well at the other ones, too,' Jack said, eyes sparkling, and snorted at Aster's eye roll.

  
  


Midwinter came and went peacefully; North loved his new socks, and Jack loved the fact that Aster had grown him a special batch of the madder root that he'd run out of. Sandy appreciated his gift of the yellow and blue hat (which was used to smuggle a bag of chocky to him, since Tooth was on another tirade against sugary food), and Katherine and Nightlight adored their matching scarves, loosely knit from a pale peach and a vibrant indigo colour. Tooth received a surprise planter box of forget-me-nots, her favourite flower, and a set of gloves for herself and one for each of her daughters; Emma received a tiny pot of ink and a brush from Aster, because he'd seen her eyeing his paints more than once with a look of longing on her face.

It was wonderful, and Aster loved that this was his life now, gifts with friends and family – and god, he _had a family now,_ that was never going to get old.

It was in the post-Midwinter lull that Tooth came once more, though this time, Aster knew she was coming; she'd said she would when he'd delivered the prezzies to her door. 'Three days from Midwinter, at dusk,' she said. 'There's a lot to go over. Will it be alright if I stay the night? It will be late by the time I'm through with this part.'

'Course ye can,' he'd assured. 'Don't worry any.'

Now, it was the third morning after Midwinter; Aster lay on the couch, reading idly from a book of paint recipes Sandy had put together for him, and Jack floated above him, near the ceiling, and rolling a ball of undyed yarn.

'Sweetheart?'

'Mm,' Aster said, flicking his ear over his book.

'Got kind of a weird question.'

'Well, I'll be stuffed,' Aster said, setting his book on his chest. 'Ye? Weird question? I can't believe it.'

'You know how everyone says I'm a terrible influence on you?'

'Just means I'm a good influence on ye.'

'You're awful. Be serious for a second. And don't you dare say it, I can see it on your face. Yes, _I'm_ asking _you_ to be serious.'

Aster subsided in his teasing, looking at Jack patiently.

'What do you know about the End?'

Aster twitched his ears involuntarily. Jack was indeed serious; this kind of question normally only came out late at night, when Jack got into one of his thinking moods. Clearly, Tooth's impending visit was having an effect on him.

'Not much, to be true,' Aster admitted. 'A bit more than some, though. Australia's fair closer to the original site than here.'

'Tell me,' Jack commanded, and before Aster could protest, he dropped down to wriggle into place atop Aster. They fit well together – always had – and Aster nosed at Jack's temple, sighing in a put-upon way that was only half-honest.

'Told ye, it isn't much,' he said. 'Me granddam on me dam's side was the only one old enough to remember the Before – she was one of the latebloomers. Nearly fifteen when she got her gift. She told me dam, who told me. It was a burst of radiation from a far off star.'

'I know that,' Jack said, 'but only vaguely? My dad said something similar, but he didn't talk about it.'

'Most folk don't, Snowbird,' Aster replied gently. 'They're not good memories. It was a specific kind of radiation that's especially deadly to humans – gamma. Me dam said we were lucky – it struck in an uninhabited part of the Eastern Ocean. Course, radiation spreads when contained in an atmosphere, so it didn't stay there long. Was everywhere within a few days. And I dunno how long it took for people to start noticing gifts.'

'Huh,' Jack said, and crossed his arms on Aster's chest, looking down into his face intently as he set his chin on his forearms. 'Tell me about your family.'

Aster swallowed, because even now, no longer alone, the thought of his parents was a hard one to bear. But he didn't have to talk about the end of their lives, he supposed, and not about them, specifically.

Jack was waiting patiently, eyes understanding as Aster wrestled with the ghosts who still haunted him, and smiled encouragingly when he caught Aster's gaze.

'Ye know Tooth is going to come and tell ye a story, right?' Aster said, not exactly a no, but not a yes either.

'I know,' Jack agreed, and kissed Aster's collarbone. 'I want your stories, too.'

Aster wanted to say no, in a distant sort of way, but Jack was the opposite of distant, and the way he ran his fingers soothingly through the fur at Aster's shoulders was helping. And he _did_ want to talk about them, he realised. He wanted Jack to know.

'Well, me grandsire is who I got me name from,' he said slowly. 'Before – well, in the Before, he wasn't like – this.' He twitched his ears, which got a light laugh out Jack. 'He wasn't like me sire, though – he was a rabbit animutt, like me.'

'Your father wasn't a rabbit animutt?'

'He was one of the mixed animutts – got it from me granddam,' Aster confirmed. 'Never sure what it was, precisely, he was mixed with. Some kind of fox? Or dog, maybe. I never met me sire's dam. She and me grandsire from his side were dead by the time I came along.' Aster shrugged at Jack's noise. 'I had me grandsire and granddam on me dam's side, for a little while. I don't remember them too well, but they went in a sickness. Think that's what made me oldies leave Australia – the sickness, and I think there was trouble brewing. I was a tot, though, so don't take me word for it.'

'What did your father look like, then?' Jack asked, his face twisted in the way that meant he was trying to figure something out. 'I always pictured him as – an older you, maybe.'

'No, not hardly,' Aster huffed a laugh, kissing Jack's forehead. 'He was red, for starters. Dunno where the grey came from, since he was red and yellow. Kind of cream coloured in the belly, and darker red at his hands. He had claws, too, not like mine. But he had the ears, and the legs, and his snout wasn't the right kind of fox-shape, though he had teeth like the meanest old dog ye've ever seen. He had green eyes, too. Just – bluer.'

'Huh,' Jack said again.

'Anyway, his name was Evergreen, too. Like his sire. Bunnymund was the family name, even before we looked like this, and apparently the tradition of flower names was started by me great-great-granddam. Me sire was Dianthus, and me grandsire was Althaea.'

'Dianthus, I knew, but Althaea?' Jack snorted. 'Sorry, Aster, but that one's kind of funny.'

'S'why they went by Evergreen,' Aster agreed. 'Sides, Althaea was part of the taxonomy for the marshmallow plant.'

Jack snorted again, and Aster grinned. 'Precisely.'

'Keep going,' Jack said, settling back down. 'What about your grandmother?'

'Some kind of dog or fox animutt. Never met her – nor me grandsire, but apparently he wasn't grey, either. Must've come from me dam somehow – she had grey eyes.'

'And your mom's parents?'

'Peg and Jonathan Kilkernan,' Aster said, a bright wash of fondness coming over him. 'Don't remember them too well, but I remember they were close with me oldies. Her sire was the one with the growing gift, but it wasn't like me dam's; I think the connection with the earth came from me granddam. Mam never said what granddam's gift was, but it must have affected hers somehow.'

'Cool,' Jack said, and kissed Aster briefly. 'Thank you,' he said once he pulled back, and his voice was so quiet and earnest that it made the thought that flashed through Aster's mind – that his dam would have _loved_ Jack – hurt less than it would have otherwise. 'I know you don't really talk about them for a reason.'

'It's good to talk about things that hurt, sometimes,' Aster replied, and summoned up a smile that didn't feel as weak as he'd thought it would. 'Makes 'em hurt less.'

'I love you,' Jack said to that, and Aster softened.

'I love ye, too.'

They lay there for a few minutes more, trading soft kisses that weren't meant to go anywhere, be anything but what they were; then, Jack rose into the air. 'Come on,' he said, and held down a hand. 'Let's go make food for when Tooth gets here.'

'It's not even noon,' Aster protested, but let Jack pull him to his feet and set aside his book.

'So? I've got ideas, and I'm going to need your help.'

Aster rolled his eyes, but followed his husband into the kitchen, preparing himself for just about anything.

  
  


Tooth arrived in a flutter of motion, all smiles and chattering words, and Aster knew instantly that something was wrong. For all her cheer and joy, there was something forced about it; Jack seemed to pick up on it too, and spent very little time on pleasantries and meaningless small talk (though that could be his own impatience for the story, Aster was willing to admit). Neither Jack nor Aster said what they suspected aloud, however, and Tooth seemed grateful for it.

Jack showed her to the guest room she'd be staying in, and Aster took the opportunity offered, ducking out of the house for a brief moment to himself.

After the morning he'd just had – the strange bittersweet tug of remembering things he normally left buried in the earth – he needed it. He tugged on his well-loved green scarf and made his way past the snow buried fields, leaving a single path behind himself, each footstep a pool of blue shadow as the moon gleamed overhead in the pale dusk sky.

At last he stood beside the grumpy old oak, who rustled its branches together and grumbled as he ran a paw over its bark.

_Earth-waker,_ the Oak huffed. _Do you have a reason for waking me from my nap?_

'Ye know ye sound like a human when ye do that.'

_I wouldn't have the slightest idea what to do if I was unrooted,_ the Oak sniffed (or, well, cracked two of its branches together, which was essentially the same thing). _Scurrying around without a thought to the earth beneath – ugh. What is the point of walking if you've found a good spot for your roots is what I want to know, Seedling._

'Ye're just over two years old. Ye don't get to call me Seedling.'

_ You will always be a Seedling to us, Earth-waker. _

'Oi,' Aster began, but the Oak interrupted.

_You will never lose a seedling's capacity to grow – that is why you are Seedling. We are all Seedlings, in our way,_ it mused, and Aster could hear the echoes of the local root system in its voice.

Aster rolled his eyes. 'If ye say so.'

_ I know so. As would you, if you ever tapped into the roots properly again. _

'I didn't much like being a tree, to be honest with ye.'

_ A pity. You made a better rooted Rooted than – what you are now. _

'In yer opinion,' Aster replied mildly. 'I like being me.'

_Even now?_ the Oak asked slyly. _You seem troubled to me._

'Not really yer bizzo.'

_ Then why did you wake me? _

'Clearly not for the pleasure of yer company,' Aster muttered, but there wasn't really a hope of the Oak not hearing him.

_Your parent unrooted, I think,_ the Oak said, and Aster flinched. _I thought so. It can be hard to think of those who planted you, when they've left the system._ There was a faint note of wistfulness in the way the twigs of the tree brushed together. After all, the acorn from which Aster had grown this oak had come from an oak lost to Pitch's shadowsmoke. It had never known its parent tree.

'Sometimes,' Aster admitted, setting his paw against the Oak's bark. 'Mostly, I don't.'

_ Think of them? _

'Remember them.'

_ It might be good to remember them. Forgetting things is dangerous. _

'Ye're telling me.'

_The Great Seedling –_ the Oak's name for Robin _– is stirring. You should return. Your partner is making trouble, I think._

'Nah, he's just asked Robin to let me know that they're ready,' Aster said, tilting his ears back home and listening to Robin's mostly incomprehensible babble. For all that Robin was technically older than the Oak, it was little more than a child in its thinking. 'I'll leave ye to yer rest.'

_Good. But –_ a moment of dithering, in which the tiny twigs on the ends of the Oak's branches trembled, as if in a great wind. _Wake me if you have a need, Earth-waker._

From the consistently crabby Oak, this was like an _I love you._ 'Will do,' Aster said, a little stunned, and directed himself home.

Tooth and Jack were seated in the living room when Aster returned, sipping quietly at Jack's favoured peppermint tea, judging from the scent. Aster accepted his mug with good grace, and was grateful that neither of them asked what he'd been doing. Tooth smiled at him, and set aside her cup.

'Are you ready?'

'As I'll ever be,' Aster replied, taking his seat beside Jack. His husband had made no pretences of knitting or other distraction tonight; instead, he watched Tooth with a calm but intense gaze that was probably a little disconcerting, if the way Tooth shifted beneath it was any indication.

'Well, then. Where to start…'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, dear. What's wrong with Tooth?


	6. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I literally almost forgot to post this today
> 
> I'm, uh. I'm real on top of things, huh?

'Where to start… Well, let's pick up where we left off last. Ombric and Sandy.

'They quickly became good friends, a little family of sorts, which is a very good thing, since Ombric's parents split and headed in different directions the day he turned twelve. It was viewed widely at the time as not only very poor form – they had a  _ child, _ they couldn't just abandon him – but as wildly irresponsible. Who would take on the care of a boy at the moment? Life was hard, and there was barely enough to go around, even with the whole town banding together the way they did.

'Sandy, of course, was bewildered that anyone thought it would have happened otherwise, and as soon as he heard what had happened, he came huffing and puffing out of his library and bustled Ombric right back in it, before anyone could put up a fuss. He was twenty-one, and certainly of age to care for a child; not only that, he was directly responsible for the founding of Riverfield, though he'd refused to become mayor when asked.

'No, I hadn't known all of this when I started last – are you going to interrupt every time, Jack, or will you be quiet? I'm never going to get to the end of this story if you don't!

'So, yes, Sandy not only thinks of Ombric as a son, but has a pretty weighty claim to the title of his father. They lived in peace in the library for many years, Sandy doing his best to raise a child when he'd had such a short childhood himself, and Ombric trying his best to behave (though, of course, being a teenager is hard no matter  _ what _ situation you're in, goodness knows).

'Riverfield grew larger, by trickles and by bounds. There was even a community attempt to create a true farm a ways away, in a flat section of the valley. Yes, this farm, though at the time, more people worked on it, and no one with a gift like yours, Bunny, dear. It didn't last long, ultimately; the project was begun the year Ombric turned twenty-three, and was abandoned by the time he was twenty-five.

'Ombric had spearheaded the campaign, though in one of his letters to me, he freely admitted that it was a not entirely altruistic venture; he was desperate to expand Riverfield in any way he could, to make his world larger. Ombric is an intensely curious man, and longed to see the world beyond Riverfield's safe (and closely guarded) borders. Sandy had always forbidden him from travelling too far. He was frightened of the larger world, you see – it was unsafe, full of unknown mutts and new dangers, raiders and dangerous animals.

'The project was abandoned, ultimately, because of raiders. It was simply too dangerous to attempt to grow so much food so far from the town – and no one, not even Ombric, was willing to live that far out from safety. Travel? Yes, there were those brave enough to do that. But to live?

'Well, you, Bunny, are a very special case. You're just about the only one we'd trust to live this far out by yourself, and now you're not, so it's easier. Thinking strictly from a strategic point of view, a flier who can make the trip in fifteen minutes and send messages almost instantaneously, and an animutt who can run the entire thing in five minutes, not to mention move faster than all of his opponents, are ideal to have out here. Excellent watchers for any troubles coming from the east. Now that Santoff Claussen is settled into the western pass, I'd dare say Riverfield is one of the safest towns in Normerica.

'Well, Ombric's gift is remarkable in many ways, but doesn't have many strictly combative advantages, other than distraction and blinding techniques. Certainly a handy thing to have in a fight when your opponents outnumber you, but only if you have someone else with you. Otherwise, your best plan is to hide yourself and sneak away.

'Sorry, strategy is a bit of a passion of mine. Anyway, the farming project was abandoned, and with it, the only outlet for Ombric's restlessness and curiosity. Almost a year passed before he finally broke, but having tasted freedom once, he couldn't leave it alone. So, one night, he packed a little travelling bag, and took up his favourite walking stick, and stole away from Riverfield without anyone knowing.

'Now, the raiders that were causing all the trouble were not your usual, desperate mutts, just trying to get by. They weren't even mutts from Normerica. These were Russian bandits, born and bred in the harsh aftermath of the End, and in desolate, fractured Russia, no less. I've spent some time in Russia, though this was years and years later, of course, and once everything had settled down some – but it's a hard life, make no mistake. They'd crossed the sea when they decided that pickings were too slim in their homeland, and they'd swept a wide swathe of destruction in their path across our continent.

'Among their number were more than a few children, as well – in Russia, at the time, it was a common thing to… well, sell an unwanted child for money. You've no doubt heard about how many second-gens were abandoned. In Russia, it was a way to get food and other supplies quickly, and in some ways, it promised a better life for the child, depending on who they were sold to. The children were typically trained in whatever trade or craft the buyer was trained in, as assistants, or (and this was more common, I'm afraid) treated as little better than servants. The lucky ones were raised as loved children, while the unlucky ones were slaves in all but name.

'Nicholas St. North was very lucky, though he didn't know it yet.

'He'd been sold as a day-old infant to this band of raiders, and while they didn't beat him, they certainly didn't love him. What kind words he heard were exceedingly rare, and his situation was dreadful at the best of times – the raiders refused to teach him any English, either, so that even if he did escape, he'd have no way to ask for help.

'Now, many children in this situation – certainly all the other children in the raider band – grow up to be hard, harsh people. The circumstances demand it of them. But Nicholas had something special to him, a greater sense of right and wrong. And he knew, for all that he was only seven years old, that what the raiders did was wrong.

'Yes, seven is proving to be a bit of a momentous age amongst us, isn't it? Well, first Sandy and the End, now North, then – well, you, Bunny! You came here when you were seven after all, as well.

'Anyway, back to Nicholas. He followed this raider band, the only family he'd ever known in his short, hard life, across Normerica. He was still too little to be asked to assist with any of the raids, but he helped some of the other children and the elderly members of the raider band with taking care of the camp and such, and at last, after months of travel, they settled some miles west of the Western Pass. Any who travelled through Riverfield – such as some of the trade caravans, a fairly recent phenomenon – to the towns and settlements on either side of the mountains were their prey.

'Ombric knew that the raiders were there, and intended to avoid them entirely. However, the only way to leave the valley without walking quite a distance was through the Western Pass, so he resolved to be as stealthy as could be, and crept along.

'Unfortunately for his adventure (but most fortunately for Ombric), that was the night the raider band decided they wanted to live in the valley proper.

'From what Ombric has surmised, they wanted to settle in the farmland and have a sort of – base of operations there. The leader of this raider band was a cruel-faced man, short and wide, and he intended to set himself up as a warlord, essentially. North was too young to have been made privy to many of their plans, but he recalls very vividly that night.

'The leader – a mutt who went by Hannibal, though I doubt very much that was his birth name – collected the band together, and announced that they were moving to their new, permanent home. Nicholas was a bit aghast at this – he liked these mountains, the gentle river flowing north to south by way of a meandering western path, and he liked how peaceful it all seemed. He thought that if Hannibal succeeded, all of that peace would go away. To Nicholas, that idea was stomach-turning. He was still a child, after all, and dreamed of the day when he'd be able to get away from the raiders and live at last in some peace of his own. He'd even, once or twice, dreamed of someone coming to save him, to rescue him from the wicked raiders.

'He helped them pack up their things, and began to move with them towards the Western Pass. Meanwhile, Ombric was creeping towards them, unaware of their intentions.

'Ombric had just reached the pass when he could hear the loud clatter of the raider's caravan. He ducked into the trees and hid, using his illusions to cloak himself in leaves and bark, as if he was a tree. He watched, horrified, as at least a hundred raiders – enough to  _ destroy _ Riverfield, if they attacked all at once – came up on the road. They paused, and a short, fat man shouted something in a language Ombric had never heard; the raiders began to make camp for the night, the darkness proving too much for them to push through.

'Nicholas was miserable. He'd heard the others talking about the pretty little town below, and how many supplies they'd get if they raided it all at once versus spread out over a few months. He hated that the raiders did that – he'd seen them come back to the camp more than once, covered with the blood and soot of a town razed to the ground. He wished there was something he could do to save the town, but he was so small, and even if his power had been useful in Russia, which had never seemed short of snow and ice, it was little good here during the summer.

'Nicholas crept into the trees, looking for some time alone and hoping it would be a little while before the other raiders noticed him gone. He didn't dare run away – the last child who had tried had been found within the hour and beaten, so he knew there was no escape that way. He just wanted some quiet.

'Imagine his surprise, then, when he went to sit next to a tree trunk and fell right through the bark!

'Over him stood a man with red hair and wide eyes, staring at him. He looked just as surprised to see Nicholas, and after a moment, he crouched down. Nicholas tried to edge away, but then – wonder of wonders – the man  _ smiled _ at him, and said something he couldn't understand.

'Nicholas, for all that he hadn't been taught to speak English, nevertheless had picked up some words from what the raider's victims screamed, and so said, very quietly, 'Help me.'

'Ombric was shocked. Here was a child who had simply stumbled through his illusions; none had ever done that before. Worse, though, he looked nearly starved to death, with black hair and blue eyes wide with terror. The little plea, thick with an accent and clearly the only words he knew, about broke Ombric's heart – and made him so angry he felt like he might explode. In many ways, the boy reminded Ombric of himself, small and neglected, and it was entirely too much for Ombric to deal with.

'He nodded to the little boy, and held up a finger to his lips. The boy nodded back, understanding like a light on his face, and Ombric dispelled the illusion he'd kept up – he'd need all of his concentration for the trick he was going to pull.

'Closing his eyes and concentrating, he slowly wove together the image of a great brown bear, taller than any bear that's walked the earth, vicious and mean looking. When he opened his eyes again, the boy was staring at the bear, eyes wide once more, and Ombric was about to try to reassure him that it wasn't real when the boy surprised him again.

'Nicholas swiped a hand through the bear, awed by the great illusion. His hand went right through, and he looked at the man who had agreed to save him, and smiled. This ghost-bear – Nicholas didn't know what illusions were, yet – would  _ definitely _ be enough to scare off Hannibal and the raiders, and he told the red-haired man so, even though he couldn't understand him.

'It had been a very long time since Ombric had met anyone who wasn't afraid in some way of his gift when first encountered. The last, in fact, had been Sandy, and he resolved to keep this child safe, as best he could.

'Tugging the boy behind him, Ombric sent the bear illusion towards the raider camp, and added the sounds of crashing branches and breaking trees. The raider camp was instantly panicked – there was shouting, a gathering of weapons, people running to and fro. Someone shouted Nicholas' name, and Ombric held tight to the boy's hand, so he wouldn't run.

'Not that Nicholas  _ would, _ mind you. He was having great fun, watching the raiders who had made him so miserable for so long run around, scared out of their wits. He even giggled a bit when the red-haired man made the ghost-bear roar, and he could hear Hannibal shriek.

'Finally, the bear illusion lumbered out from the trees, and the raiders fired their weapons on it. Naturally, all the bullets passed through, and no one dared get closer to try their swords and such on it. With great screams and shouts, the raiders began to run away, and soon Ombric and the boy were the only ones left on the pass.

'Ombric crouched down next to the boy, letting his bear illusion follow the raiders as far as it could, and gestured to himself. 'Ombric,' he said clearly. 'My name –' again he pointed at himself '– is Ombric.'

'Nicholas was pleased as punch, and smiled brightly at the man – Ombric, apparently. 'Name Nicholas,' Nicholas replied poking himself in the chest with his thumb. 'Thank you,' he added in Russian, because he didn't know how to say it in English.

'Carefully, and with some help from his illusions to make little pictures and such, Ombric offered to bring Nicholas back with him to Riverfield. He'd had quite enough adventure for that day, I think, and besides, he wanted to keep Nicholas safe.

'Once Nicholas understood, he nodded enthusiastically, and happily followed Ombric back to Riverfield.

'Sandy was immensely displeased with Ombric's disappearance, but he could hardly complain when Ombric had managed to chase off the raiders entirely by himself, and saved a child, to boot. As far as Sandy was concerned, he'd already raised one child, so another shouldn't be too difficult.

'Ombric taught Nicholas English, though he never did get the hang of it entirely, and Nicholas settled into his life here, with Sandy as a parent-figure of sorts and Ombric as a brother-teacher. With the raiders scared pretty firmly away from the valley – convinced, strangely enough, that it was haunted by ghost-bears – the years passed peacefully. North grew into his ice-control, and once he was fed regularly and able to exercise it, his strength gift.

'Riverfield was a peaceful place, now. It was exactly what Nicholas had wanted as a child, and though he was a fierce fighter and brave sort of man, he never did enjoy travelling again, the way Ombric seemed to yearn to do. He was quite happy where he was, and with the family he had found.

'Some years later, when he'd turned twenty-seven, he was helping Sandy build a new shed behind the library for tools and things when a new trading caravan rolled into town. It was the day before Ombric's forty-fifth birthday, and Nick volunteered to go see what wares they had, and if any were worth buying for Ombric. Sandy waved him off – they were mostly done with the shed, anyway, and even though he was fifty-six, he could handle the last few touches. Nicholas went to see the caravan, and there he met her.

'Miriam was twenty-two, and stunningly beautiful. She had bone-white hair, and brown eyes, and when she walked, the bangles on her wrists and ankles jangled like music. Nick fell in love instantly. Miriam was quite smitten with him herself – oh, don't make that face, Jack. Your grandfather was apparently quite the looker back in the day, if some of the stories I've heard are to be believed. Besides, without this part of the story, you'd never have come to be, so quite looking so sour and  _ listen. _

'Goodness, you'd think I was going to describe their courtship date by date.

'Regardless, Miriam and Nicholas hit it off, and as was pretty common at the time, were married fairly swiftly. They did love each other, truly, but for Miriam it was a spring sort of love, not one meant to last past summer. She remained here in Riverfield long enough to give birth to her child, and then spirited away with another trading caravan, never to be seen again.

'Nick was heartbroken. He's the sort of man who only loves once – when Miriam left, she took his heart with her. Her child had her white hair but Nick's blue eyes; his gifts were entirely skewed towards Nick's, with nothing but his hair to remind Nick of his mother. It happens that way, sometimes: Miriam's gifts were minor, as far as I know, and were simply overpowered by Nick's. Something about sensing rain? I can't recall.

'What was that look? No, not that one, the one you two just – oh, forget it. You're not going to tell me anything, I can tell.

'Anyway, Nick took to fatherhood like a duck to water, and his son, James, grew up. It was his ninth summer before anything changed – but that will have to wait for the morning. I'm quite tired, dears, and I'm bound to lose the thread of the story if I don't stop now.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tiny!North is the most important child in the world and no one can tell me otherwise


	7. Intermission: Nightmares

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's a good deal shorter than most any Intermission save the Prologue, but by its nature, it had to be. No fear, though - next chapter will be a morenormal length, and the Intermission after that... uh. Got broken into two, so take that as you will.

Beside him, Jack was still, and it took a lot of willpower for Aster to get to his feet. 'Let's get ye to bed, then,' he said to Tooth, who indeed looked a little wilted; it was late, far later than Aster was usually away, and he expected Tooth was much the same. 'Which room did ye put her in, love?'

'The one nearest the stairs,' Jack replied, gaze distant, but some of the fogginess disappeared as he shook his head. 'Here, I'll take her back up. Make the fire a bit bigger, tonight – Tooth doesn't have fur, and she doesn't have you as a personal heater.'

Aster nodded dutifully, and watched as they left the room.

Tooth's story was a lot to chew over, he thought as he built up the fire, the warmth like a thick quilt atop his fur. Who'd known Sandy'd had a child – much less the ancient-looking Ombric?Sandy was much older than Aster had ever suspected, and it was strange to think of. He had to be – ninety-eight or ninety-nine, if Aster was reckoning correctly.

And that North had been sold to raiders – it fair broke Aster's heart, to think of any child having to live like that, much less a member of his own ragtag family. Never mind that it had been so many years in the past.

'Hey, sweetheart?'

Aster realised he'd been staring at the fire, mulling all this over, and turned to see Jack floating and patiently waiting for him.

'Yeah, Snowbird?'

Jack opened his mouth, then shook his head. 'Nevermind. Let's go to bed, okay?'

'Ye got it,' Aster said, confused, but took Jack's proffered hand and walked with him to their own bed.

That night, he dreamt of great, ghostly bears running through the woods, and the small child who laughed to see them running.

  
  


Tooth slept in late the next morning; Aster would have as well, the late night taking its toll, but he was woken by Jack's thrashing.

'Snowbird,' Aster whispered through Jack's quiet keening and settled the flailing limbs against his own, tucking him tightly against his own sturdiness. Jack relaxed into the touch, and after a moment or two, his blue eyes cracked open.

'Are ye alright?'

'Nightmare,' Jack murmured back, and there was still a faint touch of fear to his gaze.

Aster kissed him gently, running his paws over Jack's back, holding him near and letting the questions on his tongue lay still; now wasn't the time. Jack kissed him back, without heat but with love, and that was just fine.

They lay like that for some time, preferring to keep each other company until a more decent hour arrived, and though they shared breath and soft brushes, they didn't share words.

At last, Aster made to rise, and Jack caught his wrist. 'Hey,' he said, and Aster paused, waiting.

'Just… thank you,' Jack said at last, watching him with soft eyes. 'I love you.'

'I love ye, too,' Aster answered, and ducked down to kiss him once more. 'Can ye handle breakfast for Tooth, or do ye want me to?'

Jack smiled. 'Stop being thoughtful – you know I can. It's just breakfast.'

'Noted – be less polite,' Aster replied dryly, and Jack snickered.

'Go on, go. I'll get breakfast ready if you'll feed the sheep.'

'Ye always get the easy jobs,' Aster huffed.

'Not always. Remember, you sent me to get the cacao beans from Phil.'

'Ye didn't think that was the easy job at the time.'

'Well, I've tried to borrow books from Sandy since then, and he  _ still _ won't let me, after how close we came to losing his map. So I'll concede that yours was the hard job that time.'

Aster laughed, and kissed Jack again before leaving the room, snagging his scarf on the way.  He could hear Tooth's soft breathing through her door when he passed, and hoped her rest had been more peaceful than their own.

  
  


Robin was cheerfully chattering to Aster as he fed the sheep. Judevine, the bossy ram, was butting impatiently at the feed bucket in Aster's paw; he rolled his eyes. Jack had  _ intentionally _ picked the rudest ram from the trading caravan that had passed through. Jack had declared the old bastard had 'spirit' and snatched him up.

At least he'd picked calm ewes, Aster thought exasperatedly, having finished filling the trough. Sophia, Maria, and Allison wandered peacefully over, nosing at Aster's paw for affection; Sophia was fixing to lamb again and Allison looked like she was, as well. Two new lambs, after last year's two.

Speaking of, the two yearlings were prancing over, butting at one another – both were rams, and Jack had been chuffed like nothing else.

Aster watched them, ear still tilted to Robin, who was talking cheerfully about the snow storm that was on its way from the west, according the other trees farther in the root system.

_ And there's been small storms. Seed storms, _ Robin added as Aster went and fed the chickens in quick practised motions. Robin had finally gotten over its habit of repeating itself every few words, and was trying to sound more and more adult. Aster was proud of it, that it had come so far so quickly. It sounded less like a six year old and more like a child on the verge of adolescence.

'Seed storms?' Aster asked, eyeing the two lambs and chivvying one to the other side of the trough when the head butting was getting a little too violent.

_ East, _ Robin agreed.  _ Other end of the valley. _

Aster frowned. 'What do ye mean?'

_ Brief snows. The rooted there don't know why. _

Aster shook his head. 'Jack said the wind currents there are thick – they might cause flurries, maybe?'

Robin made a sound like a heavy weight settling on its branches, its preferred way of sighing.  _ The rooted don't know, but they're curious. I should keep telling you? _

'That'd be a right help, Robin,' Aster said, and smiled. 'Thank ye.'

_ You're welcome. _ Robin seemed to draw itself up proudly, and then began to talk with the other trees in the root system.

Aster hummed and went back inside, knocking snow off the bottom of his feet once he reached the natural steps. He could hear a quiet hum through the door, and when he let himself in and wandered over to the kitchen, he found Jack frying up eggs, humming back and forth with the Wind.

'Tooth still not up, I take it?' Aster asked, leaning against the doorjamb.

To his surprise, Jack leapt a literal foot in the air, taking flight in his surprise and whirling around, almost spilling the eggs out of the pan.

Aster frowned, ears cocking forward; he'd not exactly sneaked in through a window, here. He thought he'd been loud enough.

'Sorry,' Jack muttered, looking sheepish. 'A little – a little jumpy, still.'

'S'alright, Snowbird,' Aster replied, and walked over, taking the pan. 'Why don't ye go get Tooth up, tell her tucker's just about on.'

'I told you I could handle breakfast,' Jack said, looking annoyed.

'Ye did,' Aster replied, eyebrow rising. 'I'll just get the bread, love.'

'Ugh, fine,' Jack replied, and soared from the room, leaving Aster surprised. Robin made a questioning noise through one of the living walls – like leaves dropping – and Aster sighed.

_ Why is he mad? _

'Couldn't rightly tell ye,' Aster replied, shifting the eggs to a plate Jack had set beside the stove and making his way to the pantry, looking for the bread. 'He didn't have a good night, though, so he might be a bit crank is all.'

_ Did he sleep badly? Why? _

It may have gotten over its need to repeat itself, but it was still as incessantly curious as any child, and Aster bit back a second sigh. 'He had a nightmare, Robin.'

_ A nightmare? _

'A bad dream.'

_ A dream – the night pictures? _

'Yeah, that's it.'

_ And this one was bad? Sick-bad or hurt-bad? _

'I don't know,' Aster replied honestly. 'Mostly scared-bad, I reckon.'

_ My poor Jack boy, _ Robin clucked with a sound like bark cracking.  _ He will be okay? _

'Has been so far,' Aster said, giving a non-answer. Robin seemed content with it, though, and returned to its discussion with the rest of the root system.

After a few minutes, Jack flew back in, closely followed by a yawning Tooth.

'Sorry, dears,' she said, smiling at Aster and taking a seat. 'I suppose it was later than I'm used to.'

'No dramas, Tooth,' Aster said, smiling back. Jack still looked a bit tight around the edges, and Aster wondered if it would be better to look apologetic and try to serve him brekkie, or to let Jack do it himself so as to not tread on his temper again.

Ultimately, he decided on the latter – too easy to rile Jack up again, he knew, so he served Tooth some eggs and warm bread then bustled about, making tea and giving Jack time to do as he wished. It was quiet, the sounds of cutlery clattering against clay plates, and eventually Tooth sat back, nursing her tea.

'So,' she said, looking between them with a gaze that was a touch too knowing for Aster's taste. 'Should I continue, or come back another time?'

'There's more to this part?' Jack said, zeroing in on her, temper lost to his ravenous curiosity. Aster hid his smile.

'Quite a bit. After all,' and here Tooth gave them both a smile, 'we haven't even met Katherine or Nightlight yet, and other than you two, they're our last few big players!'

'I knew you were holding out on us,' Jack said, grinning back. Aster relaxed minutely; it looked like Jack's fit of pique was past, at least for the moment.

'As though I would,' Tooth sniffed. 'Now, it was the summer of 2042, I think (you know Nicholas is terrible with dates…)'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, good goddamn, what's wrong with everyone?


	8. Chapter 4

'It was the summer of 2042, I think (you know Nicholas is terrible with dates). But I think that must have been it, because Ombric said it was the summer before James turned ten.

'Your father was a bright young thing, Jack – according to Nicholas, you'd be the spitting image of him if you didn't have so much of your mother's face. He'd just recently gotten the hang of his strength gift, and Nicholas had been teaching him carving with the ice manipulation, to work on his control. Though he was never quite so good as his father, a point of frustration for a long time, he learned that brute force applied carefully can be an excellent substitute for finesse. Though, I have to admit, that sounds like a kind of finesse to me.

'Now, in the summer of James' ninth year, there began to be problems with raiders. Bigger problems than they'd had since – well, since Nicholas had arrived. Theft from the community stores and robberies of the passing trading caravans, that sort of thing. It reached a head, however, when an entire caravan went missing.

'Now, something like that had never happened before. An entire caravan – missing! There were certainly delays and such for poor weather; you two are familiar with that, remember last year when the big caravan from Saorsa couldn't make it farther than a hundred miles because of the rain? They still sent word to their regular stops that they wouldn't be able to make it.

'But from this caravan – nothing. No word. And they'd always been like clockwork. Apparently, back in the day, it was said you could time the date of Midsummer by when they rolled into Riverfield.

'So, there was a great outcry when a different caravan came into town and asked after them, since three weeks prior they'd declared their intent to arrive at Riverfield in no less than a fortnight. They were a week late. Imagine! An absolutely preposterous amount of time.

'The mayor at the time (neither of you would have met him, he was quite old at that point, a Mr. Qwerty) held a meeting, and the town voted almost unanimously to send search parties out to see if something terrible had befallen the caravan in the passes. The one dissenting vote, I'll have you know, was Philomena Punxsutawny.

'Yes, I thought that would make you smile! Outnumbered, however, she acquiesced, and they sent out search parties to the western pass, the northern and southern ridges, and the pass in the east.

'Now, I could describe the search itself, but I assure you, they found absolutely nothing to the north and south, and only tracks from the other caravan in the Western Pass.

'In the Eastern Pass, however – well. First, I should tell you about Katherine.

'She doesn't know who her parents were, much like Nicholas. Many second generational children in Normerica were abandoned, their parents unsure what to do with them or how to care for them. Fortunately, her parents had been thoughtful enough to leave her outside a trading caravan late one night, and though no one ever saw who'd left her there, they were happy enough to take her on. A village to raise a child, in essence.

'Now, Katherine wondered about her parents from time to time, but she was quite happy with the trading caravan, unlike poor Nicholas some twenty-or-so years earlier. She didn't have any specific people whom she thought of as family, but she had some friends amongst the older people, and they made her feel useful – her gift with words and making herself understood to just about anyone came very much in handy when they'd stop at the big cities, like Saorsa and Friedmont.

'The caravan she was a part of tended to split into two for the summer track, and she'd always gone with the section that travelled south instead of west. The year she was thirteen, however, she decided she wanted to be a little adventurous, and travel with the westbound group. She had no idea at the time, but that decision would shape the rest of her life.

'You see, the raiders that had begun to make such bold moves in the valley of Riverfield and the surrounding passes would have been  _ very _ familiar to Nicholas, had he ever run across them.

'In the intervening years, his old raider leader, Hannibal, had grown more and more paranoid. He suspected the boy who had gone missing on that fateful evening had not been eaten by the ghost bear, as thought the raiders under his control, but had somehow been behind the apparition. The child had always been strange – strange behaviour, strange notions of right and wrong, strange everything since he could walk and talk! It was not beyond the worsening Hannibal's mind to think that Nicholas had a hand in their humiliating retreat.

'Who can say why madness sets in? I've spent a lot of time in people's heads, my dears, and I couldn't tell you. From what I've gathered, Hannibal's madness was compounded by his natural cruelty – it wasn't unthinkable that a seven year old had been behind his decline. And from what Ombric, Nicholas, and Katherine have told me, he very much wanted revenge.

'Of course, we know Hannibal wasn't nearly so mad as he appeared to his followers. After all, Nicholas  _ had _ survived, and had even played a small part in the ghost bear's appearance, insomuch as he'd inspired Ombric to do it.

'Nevertheless, it is without doubt a madness that came upon Hannibal, driven by his obsession with what he'd lost – his power, his prestige, and even a small child that had been stripped from him.

'I couldn't tell you, Bunny. To be honest, I have trouble imagining it myself.

'Regardless, it was Hannibal and his raiders that were causing all the fuss, and as you might have guessed, it was Hannibal behind the caravan's disappearance.

'The journey had seemed quite normal to Katherine until they reached the path up to the Eastern Pass. They'd stopped twice and done some trading, and Katherine recalls thinking that it was the same old same old she would have done with the other caravan, just with less ocean and more climbing.

'They made camp that night, and in the early evening light, Katherine was playing with the little son of one of the caravan's cooks, to keep him from being a pain to his father. That was when the raiders struck.

'With great, howling war cries and warning gunshots, they spilled out of the trees; it was all over in a few seconds. The caravan had an excellent policy, in my opinion; their lives were worth more than any goods they carried, and their surrender was unanimous. What they hadn't expected was the way the raiders demanded that they, along with their goods, travel with them to the hideout on the Eastern Pass.

'See, Hannibal hadn't heard word of the ghost bear in many years, and he'd only seen it in the Western Pass, so he thought they would be safe in the Eastern Pass. It was where they'd been launching all of their attacks from, in a cleverly concealed overhang almost thirty feet off the ground. It was here that the raiders led the traders and Katherine.

'Unfortunately for Katherine, she's always been a lovely girl, and Hannibal took notice.

'I made the same face. You two  _ do _ know you make the same expression as each other when you’re disgusted, yes? I see you didn't. Katherine will laugh.

'Yes, I  _ have _ noticed that about their lights. It's sweet, isn't it – oh, stop getting me sidetracked!

'Now, where was I? Oh, thank you, Bunny, dear.

'Hannibal was getting on in years, and thinking about the legacy he would leave behind. And he decided that this girl, with the words in lights around her head and the brave look in her eyes, was going to become his wife.

'Katherine was understandably horrified when he announced this – they'd barely arrived at the hideout before he declared it and ordered all the other prisoners tied up.

''Wait!' she cried out, thinking so hard a curl on her head began to twirl. 'Clearly, sir, you don't understand how marriage works in Normerica! You're from – Russia, yes?'

'Hannibal was understandably suspicious, but he'd never made a point of hiding his accent (nor of acquainting himself with local customs), so he nodded.

''Then you couldn't have known,' Katherine said, trying to sound kind. 'We must spend – er, seven days apart, so that when we marry, it is – well, purer. And on the wedding night,' she added desperately, 'I must tell you a story before – er –'

'She couldn't even bring herself to stay the words, and Hannibal was watching her with narrowed eyes. 'I will marry you,' she said at last, 'but we must respect my customs, or I will use my magic and make sure you never have a child!'

_ 'That _ was enough to pause him. Even before the End, there have been stories of magic all over the world, and it wasn't impossible to believe that this girl with the words around her head was actually summoning witchlights. And he wasn't going to risk any future children of his – not out of compassion, mind you, but I assume they would have lived lives very similar to Nicholas if he'd had them.

''What kind of story?' Hannibal demanded.

''That's a secret until the wedding night,' Katherine replied, and Hannibal, to everyone's surprise, backed off.

'Of course it was rubbish. She made it all up to buy herself some time to think. And as the days crept by, one by one, and everyone else lost hope, Katherine kept thinking and thinking, whispering under her breath, and when the last day dawned, she thought she had an idea that might save all their lives.

'She would tell a story so long and interesting and excellent that it would last all the night and everyone would fall asleep, at which point she would untie the rest of the caravan and they'd escape, running for Riverfield, the town she knew they had been heading towards. As it began to grow dark, Hannibal waved her over and instructed her to begin her story.

''I'm sorry,' she told him, 'but it's a story I must tell to your entire family. Since you have no family, your – ladies and gentlemen, here, must stand in. Gather everyone up, please.'

'Hannibal, annoyed but afraid that she would curse him to never have children, did as she asked, settling the entire camp before her, not even leaving a watch.

'Now, Katherine had told stories her whole life – entertaining the other children of the caravan, swapping stories in the cities along the ocean and learning new ones from everyone she could meet. But this was the biggest story she'd ever tell, and the most important. She couldn't fail.

'She began, as all good stories do, with 'Once upon a time.'

'She spoke, and every word she chose was carefully selected, weighed and considered and focussed. Behind every word was her courage and her prayers, that she could keep the story going long enough, that she could put them all to sleep.

'That became her greatest wish, that they would all be so lulled by her story that they'd leave, that the words around her head turned a soothing blue. A magic – a gift – she hadn't known she'd had began to wake up behind her voice, and as the night wore on and she spun her story, one by one the raiders fell asleep.

'Now, at the same time, the search party from Riverfield was nearing the Eastern Pass, led by Nicholas and Ombric. They could see the fires from the raiders glowing in the overhang, and they looked at one another. The overhang was too far off the ground for a casual, one night campground, and they couldn't hear the joyful clamour of the caravan, only a quiet sound like a single person speaking. It could only be the raiders.

'Nicholas told the others to stay back, and unsheathed his swords, made by Theold, the new blacksmith in town. They were hefty things, but more than serviceable, and Ombric shrouded both himself and Nicholas with illusion as they crept up alone to the overhang. What they found there was astonishing.

'A young girl, all alone in the middle of camp, telling a story – and everyone around her asleep. Ombric started in surprise at this and nearly fell off the overhang. Nicholas grabbed him before he could, but the damage was done: a handful of pebbles clattered off the edge.

'The girl whirled to face them, words around her head becoming a scared, sickly green.

''Stay there!' she whispered harshly, and though her voice was steady, the words around her head trembled. 'I'll – I'll fight you!'

''No need, little one,' Nicholas replied in a low tone, and smiled. 'We came to rescue you, but I see you need no help.'

'The girl relaxed. 'Well, if you'd like,' she said, and pointed at the people Nicholas realised were tied up (and asleep, as well), 'you could help me untie them and tie these guys up?'

'Nicholas saw Hannibal, fat and snoring, and smiled wider. 'It would be pleasure of mine,' he murmured, and held out his hand for a shake. 'I am Nicholas St. North. This is my good friend Ombric.'

''Nice to meet you both,' the girl replied, 'but can introductions wait until we're all safe?'

''Ah, but we have special trick for getting rid of raiders, and I thought you might appreciate it,' Nicholas said, and winked at her before turning to Ombric. 'Go get the others, help get these poor people away. Tell them to be silent, especially Philomena! When they are down on the path, come back up. I have plan.'

''That's what worries me,' Ombric sighed, but did as Nicholas asked. Soon, all the caravan traders were roused and sent to the bottom of the path, all without waking the raiders – for the sleep the girl had put them in was deep, and was not easily disturbed.

'Ombric returned, and gave Nicholas a look like the one Parvati gives me when I tell her it's her turn to reorganise the bandages. 'You want me to do the bear thing again, don't you,' he said.

''You know me well, old friend.'

''The bear thing?' the girl asked, the words around her head turning pale green with curiosity.

''You shall see,' Nicholas said conspiratorially. 'Ombric, if you please.'

'Ombric held out his hands and concentrated; not one, not two, but  _ three _ of the largest, most fierce looking bears you've ever imagined appeared before him, and the girl squeaked in surprise. When Nicholas checked her, though, there was no fear, only wonder.

'For Katherine's part, she'd never seen something so realistic that wasn't the real thing. She wanted to touch them, to make sure that she would feel fur and not air, but then Ombric and Nicholas pulled her back to hide behind a corner with them.

'Ombric waved his hand, and an ear-shattering chorus of roars broke the night in two.

'Now, Katherine had never heard something so loud in her life, and clapped her hands over her ears; clearly, though, the raiders  _ had, _ and they all woke up in an instant before beginning to scream and run, tripping over each other in their haste to get away. The bears advanced slowly, and everyone, even the fat, old Hannibal, sprinted as quickly as their legs could carry them.

'They left behind everything – all of the trade caravan's things, and all the things they'd burgled, and as they ran, Katherine could hear them screaming in Russian, 'The Ghost-bear has returned! Flee for your lives!'

'No, she doesn't speak Russian, of course not. I suppose you've never seen her use her gift, have you, Bunny? You've never needed to, speaking English and all. She can understand anyone, no matter what language they speak, and talk to inanimate objects, and put people to sleep with a bedtime story. She might do other things, I'm not sure.

'She is a terrible singer, though, I'll agree with you. Oh, don't tell her I said that, Jack! You don't know what she did to the last person to tell her that!

'Now, as was becoming habit with those they rescued, Katherine chose to stay with Nicholas and Ombric when the rest of the caravan moved on. She was shaken up by her encounter, and seemed just as likely as Nicholas to never leave Riverfield. Hush, Jack, stop laughing. I know, I know. Stop it!

'Better. However, while the experience had frightened the young Katherine, and certainly cemented Nicholas' belief that staying in Riverfield was for the best, it had a markedly different effect on Ombric. He realised that Riverfield was a unique town in many ways – not just in its structure, but in its safety. The caravan hadn't expected anyone to come for them once they were captured, and Ombric  _ hated _ that. There needed to be more places like Riverfield, in his opinion. So, not six months after Katherine came to stay with them, in the pre-winter town meeting, he announced his intention to leave and create another town in the mountains. 

'There was some uproar over this, and there were no more vehement people than Sandy, Nicholas, and Katherine. In the short time she'd lived in Riverfield, she'd found a family in a way the caravan had never been – Ombric was like how she'd always imagine a parent should be, and Sandy was an excellent sort of grandfather, and Nicholas was like a brother to her, always teasing and caring. His son, James, was great fun to play with, and she didn't want to lose any part of this family, not while she could help it.

'Ombric was adamant, though, and declared his intention to leave the following summer, with any who chose to come with him. He explained what he intended to do carefully, how he intended Mt. Sheafer – for that was, of course, the town he ended up founding – to be closely connected to Riverfield, to work together and prevent something like the raiders ever happening again.

'As he explained, and Sandy and Nicholas protested, Katherine was planning. She wasn't going to lose this family, not if she had any say in it. She was clever, though, and could see that no amount of protest would dissuade Ombric. So she'd just have to move herself back and forth.

'Finally, summer came, and Ombric set off. Katherine went with him, with promises to travel back and forth as often as she could. She'd not been part of the family long, but Nicholas worried about her travelling alone – as he should have! She was only fourteen, after all!

'It is a  _ very _ good thing that she didn't travel alone for very long. Less than a year, as a matter of fact.

'Mt. Sheafer was a fledgling town, but it had an excellent view of the whole valley, and was well protected. It quickly became a favourite waystation of trading caravans, which did much to make sure it did well. Katherine loved Riverfield, but she loved Mt. Sheafer as well, the harsh beauty of it. She was making preparations to travel back to Riverfield for the spring when she saw him the first time.

'It was late night, and she was just going to bed when she saw the glow. High above, in the sky where the moon was absent, was a light drifting slowly south, towards Riverfield. She thought it looked like a person, but couldn't be sure.

'Her curiosity though was immediately piqued. How could it not be? She had seen many fliers in her travels, but none that glowed like they carried the moon in their chest.

'Hush, that's how she put it. Yes, they are very sweet together, I agree,  _ stop interrupting Jack Frost or I will break out the cough syrup. _

'You're awful about this. Oh, thank you, Bunny. I wonder if stuffing bread in his mouth was necessary, but he's  _ your _ husband, I assume you know best.

'Anyway, she picked up her bag, shouted a goodbye to a very surprised Ombric, and ran out the door after the light. It took an hour of her following the light before it descended, and when it did, it was a boy only a year or two older than herself, looking at her curiously.

''Hello,' she said breathlessly, having run quite quickly to keep up (thank goodness he'd been taking his time). 'I'm Katherine.'

'The boy shrugged.

''I saw you,' she said, undaunted by his silence. 'Where are you going?'

'The boy smiled again, and waved a hand in the direction of Riverfield.

''Oh, me too,' Katherine said. Perhaps he was like Sandy, she thought, and couldn't speak? 'Would you like to keep me company?'

'The boy looked surprised at this, but nodded, and they walked companionably for a while – well, the boy floated, anyway, which Katherine didn't mind.

''Ombric would tell me I'm being insensitive,' she said after another hour's walk, 'but can you talk at all?'

'The boy shrugged.

''Do you not know how?'

'At this, the boy looked a little hunted, and Katherine felt quite clever, having figured it out. 'Well,' she said, 'In Riverfield, there's someone who can't talk either, and he might be able to help you? Not talk,' she said, 'but how to communicate?'

''I... talk,' the boy said at last, voice halting and unsure. 'Not... good.'

''Well, Nicholas and Ombric tell me I talk too much,' Katherine said, both disappointed that she'd been wrong after all and pleased that her companion could speak, 'so I might be able to help with that. Do you have a name?'

''No,' the boy replied.

''Well, you need a name,' Katherine said matter-of-factly. 'Everyone does. You're lucky – you get to pick yours out!'

'The boy made a face – Katherine made the same face to show me, but I can't do it justice. I promise it was quite funny, though. You should ask her sometime. 'Don't... know names,' the boy struggled to piece together. 'You... name.'

''You want  _ me _ to name you?' Katherine said, so startled she stopped walking. 'But – it's your  _ name. _ You should pick it.'

'The boy looked frustrated. 'Don't know names,' he said more clearly. 'You. Name.'

''Oh, drat,' Katherine huffed. 'How am I supposed to name you? I'll name you something silly and obvious, like –' she thought for a moment for an example, but all that came to mind was her first glimpse of him, a small moon in a wide sky. 'Like Nightlight, or something,' she said at last.

'The boy appeared to think about it, then nodded. 'Like,' he said. 'Nightlight.'

''Oh, no, that wasn't –' Katherine began to say, but the boy glared at her.

''Like,' he repeated. 'I like.'

'Katherine had to admit that it was an accurate name, at least. Later, when he had a better grasp on how to talk, she'd learn that she was the first person to talk to him in four years, and the first person to ever ask him questions about his name, or to pay attention to him at all. He'd been abandoned as a child as well, and lived only by chance and the occasional kindness of strangers. He'd never had a friend or family.

'That was a year or so in the future, however. Right now, all Katherine knew was that she had a new friend, strange though he might be, and she smiled at him. 'Come on,' she said, and smiled. 'You'll like Riverfield, I think. My brother was just elected mayor – of course, I call him my brother, but really we met two years ago…'

'Nightlight didn't have much to say – the dear never does, except to Katherine. But when I asked, he said that they walked the rest of that night, and he listened to her talk, and heard the sound of the future ringing through every word she spoke.

'Jack,  _ I will maim you if you don't stop laughing.' _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jack, jfc CALM YOURSELF OR DEATH WILL COME FOR YOU


	9. Intermission: Jemais Vu

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and so the hell month begins...

'Jack,' Aster said with some alarm, because Jack was laughing so hard he was floating, and Tooth's best glares were doing nothing to deter him.   


'I'm – god, I'm – sorry,' Jack choked out, 'but she's – she's such – a goddamn – hypocrite, haha –'   


'Belt up,' Aster advised, but the danger seemed past, because Tooth was rolling her eyes and relaxing into her seat.   


'Honestly, I don't know how you deal with it,' she said to Aster.   


'Patience, and the fact that he's me husband,' Aster replied dryly. 'Gets him out of a lot trouble, in me experience.'   


Jack shot him such a look of fondness, earlier temper utterly forgotten, that Aster couldn't help the way he smiled back.   


'Oh, between you two, Caroline and Consuela, and Katherine and Nightlight,' Tooth began, but gave it up with a huff. 'My goodness, I don't know what I'd do if I had to juggle a husband or  wife or whatever on top of everything else.'   


'Ye never –'   


'Oh, goodness, no,' Tooth said, shaking her head. 'Never held any interest, my dear. Friends have always been more than enough for me.'   


'Then how did you end up with seven daughters?' Jack asked, and Tooth went still.   


'Ah, that might come up next time,' she said, looking away, and Aster and Jack shared a confused glance.   


'Might?' Aster pressed.   


'There's – there's a bit more to go before we can get to me,' Tooth admitted. 'But not right now. You deserve – I mean, I need some more time.'   


That sounded ominous. Before either of them could protest, Tooth fluttered into the air. 'But I've been away from the hospital long enough,' she said at last. 'Indira is excellent at directing her sisters, but goodness knows I shouldn't leave them alone too long – a bad cold's going around now. I expect Sophie Bennet to come in any day now – Jaime came in the other day, sniffling with a nose as red as Nicholas' coat, if you can imagine –'   


Aster let her think she'd succeeded at distracting them, and led her to the door, trading well-wishes for the new year before letting her leave. When he returned to the kitchen, Jack's laughter was still in his face, but his voice was serious as he asked, 'What was all that about?'   


Aster shrugged helplessly, thinking he'd quite like to ask that question himself, but refraining.

 

 

Aster realised one morning a week later that he no longer knew where Jack went during the day.   


A few months past, if he'd been asked, he could have said with absolute certainty that Jack would be tending to the sheep's coats or the chickens' coop, or preparing dye batches, or cooking, or maintenance around Robin. After all, Jack had never made a secret of what he did, and even on the days where he decided he wanted to fly a distance for the day, get out some of his restlessness, he'd always made sure to mention it to Aster.   


At some point, that had stopped. Aster hadn't noticed, to his own shame. To be fair, there had been a lot happening, starting that late October night Tooth had first come to them, stories on her lips; first, Caroline and Consuela had returned. Then there'd been the matter of setting them up in a home. Then the work of preparing for winter properly, and the haze of Midwinter's busywork. There hadn't been a lot of normalcy for a while.   


But now that things had settled some, and January was in a few days, Aster finally knew what had been bothering him.   


He considered asking Jack outright, and he weighed the concept in his head as he set himself to cleaning the less-used upper floors. On the one paw, it wasn't a big deal – certainly embarrassing for Aster, that he'd been so neglectful of his own husband, but not impossible to make up for.   


On the other, something else was bothering Aster. Sure, he'd never sought out the information himself, but then, he'd never had to before. Jack had always been plenty pleased to volunteer the information, his voice filling their home with bright laughter and chatter. And now he still chattered, still laughed, but it had gone... flat. And he never said where he was going now.   


Maybe he didn't want to say. Just because they were married, Aster reasoned with himself as he dusted a windowsill, didn't mean they had to be wrapped up in each other's lives completely. It was only proper that there would be some things they kept to themselves.   


His conscience whispered to him, reminding him that it had never been that way before, so why had it changed now that they were married? Had he done something wrong, or been too nosy?   


Did Jack regret –   


'No,' he muttered harshly under his breath. There was no chance. Aster had seen the love Jack had, had felt it kissed into his fur and his ears and his mouth, had watched it in a million little kindnesses and heard it in a thousand thoughtful words. Jack loved him, he had no doubt of that.   


But now the thought was  _ there. _ It had been thought, and couldn't be recalled. Did Jack regret marrying him?   


'He doesn't,' Aster murmured, having paused in his dusting to stare out the window over the snowy planes and curves of his farm.   


_ Friend? _ Robin asked, startling him.   


'It's nothing, Robin,' Aster said, forcing some cheer into his voice. 'Just – thinking.'   


He returned to his cleaning, and bit back on his own insecurities. He was just concerned, was all, and he'd have to let it resolve itself. Jack would be fine.   


He had to be fine.

 

January came on with a bluster and shrieking cold that Aster hadn't felt in years. The snow was stinging when it blew against fur and skin alike, and for the first time, Aster's fur didn't feel like enough insulation against the howling wind. He stayed firmly inside, letting Jack and his ridiculously high cold tolerance handle the sheep and chickens.   


Since his revelation, nothing had changed. He'd tried probing a bit, as subtly as he was able, but Jack just deftly turned aside his efforts, talking about just about everything under the sun  _ except _ where it was he went. No matter how strongly the wind battered at Robin's trunk or how thickly the snow fell, Jack left each morning and returned long after dark each night.   


What worried Aster the most was that each time Jack returned, his eyes held a little less light, and he was exhausted to the bone. And his nightmares had become almost nightly.   


He held his tongue, though. Either Jack would tell him, or he wouldn't. If he did, excellent – Aster would do everything in his power to help him, anything he could. If he didn't...   


Aster bit back on the fear each time it came up. Jack would tell him in his own time. He had to. He  _ would. _   


Aster had never been raised with any kind of religion, the way some others had, but if there was anything to hear his prayers, it would have heard the same words over and over:  _ please let Jack be alright. _   


Even amongst his worry for Jack, though, he still had time for his sister-in-law, and that was where this first week of January found him, sitting in his kitchen with Emma and sipping tea as the storm raged outside.   


'And Jack went  _ out _ in this?' Emma asked, aghast.   


'Ye don't have a leg to stand on there,' Aster pointed out.   


'Oh, come on, I haven't seen you since Midwinter!'   


'Ye still lobbed in right during a blizzard, Em.'   


'And Jack lobbed out,' Emma said, and Aster winced. Emma looked at him appraisingly. 'Trouble in paradise, then?'   


'Not precisely,' Aster said, a little uncomfortable to be talking about this with, of all people, Jack's little sister.   


'What'd he do now?' she asked, blowing on her tea.   


'Nothing.'   


'What did you do?'   


'Nothing,' Aster said, then shrugged. 'Which might be the problem.'   


'Look, I know I'm going to get you to spill. You know I'm going to get you to spill. Can we please,  _ please _ skip the really awkward part where you pretend for the sake of your own pride that you tried to resist?'   


Aster couldn't help his laughter. 'Ye sounded like North for a minute there.'   


'You're stalling.'   


Aster groaned. 'Ye're worse than a wild dog with meat.'   


Emma grinned at him. 'I can get worse. Tell me what's wrong.'   


Aster was silent for a long minute, staring down into his cup. Emma waited patiently, sipping at her own and humming occasionally under her breath.   


'Jack's been – secretive, lately,' Aster admitted at last. 'Won't tell me where he's going, won't talk about it. His nightmares have been worse lately. And I – I don't think I can ask.'   


'What do you mean?' Emma prompted.   


'If he wanted me to know, he'd tell me.'   


'Doesn't mean you shouldn't know,' Emma replied, frowning. 'It's not like Jack to keep a secret like this.'   


'Might be that it wasn't meant to be a secret,' Aster shrugged, and took a sip of his now cool tea. 'Reckon I've never really asked him about what he did during the day – he always just told me. For all I know, he's pissed I've never asked. I should have.'   


'Why?' Emma asked sensibly. 'If you never had to before, I mean. I don't think that's it, Bunny.'   


'Well, I don't know what it might be, then,' Aster said. 'I just – I have to trust him.'   


'Of course you do,' Emma said, frowning again. 'That's what you're supposed to do if you're married. And I don't think this is really your fault.'   


'How do ye figure that?'   


'He's the one keeping the secret, right?'   


'Yeah,' Aster agreed, but his heart wasn't in it. Emma seemed able to tell, because she waited for him to continue instead of doing it herself. 'It's just – it should have never come to this,' Aster said, looking away from Emma and to the ice window over the kitchen sink. Outside, the storm was picking up speed again, lashing out against Robin and any tree who dared stand in its way. He hoped it would let up, soon; there were a lot of trees that would need care if they were to make it to spring, but he couldn't get to them until the storm had subsided.   


'To what?' Emma asked patiently.   


'To all of this,' Aster shrugged. 'I should have been asking from the start, or...'   


'Aster,' she said, voice firm, and Aster started; he couldn't recall the last time she'd called him by his real name. 'Do you know what my ma would have said right here?'   


Aster shook his head mutely, still stunned and getting more so by the minute.   


'That you are way too good at blaming yourself,' Emma proclaimed, and pointed at him with a vaguely threatening air. 'You're too fast to say this is your fault! It's not. Maybe it's not Jack's, either – we don't know, because we don't know what's going on. But there's one thing I know for sure, and that it's  _ definitely _ not on you.'   


Aster warmed a bit, because wasn't that Emma all over again, scolding and still comforting, teasing and still smarter than her years. 'Ye're just like Jack, ye know,' he said fondly, and she huffed.   


'I hope not. I'd think I'd  _ tell _ Padma if something was bothering me.'   


'Speaking of,' Aster said, hoping to change the subject to something lighter, 'how are ye two going?'   


Emma's face lit up and softened, all at once. It wasn't  _ quite _ the same way Jack did, but certainly close enough that no one could mistake the resemblance. 'We're great,' she said, and sighed gustily. 'Well,  _ we _ are, but Padma's been really worried lately.'   


'What's wrong?' Aster asked, frowning.   


'Her mom's been out of sorts, lately,' Emma explained, and got up to pour herself more tea. 'She's been really tense and anxious, and – not mean, but sort of quick to get mad? She apologises, but there's something wrong, and she won't say what.'   


Aster let Emma pour him a new cuppa as well, and took the warm mug between his two paws. 'That sounds familiar,' he said slowly.   


'To what? To Jack?' Emma asked, then she understood. 'Wait, you don't think Tooth knows something?'   


'She might,' Aster said, the thought like lead in his gut. 'If Jack didn't tell me, and he didn't tell ye, who else would he yabber to?'   


'Maybe he's sick?'   


Aster shook his head. 'I would have noticed  _ that. _ I might not know where he's gone walkabout, but I do see him at night. Ye'd think he'd have a cold after all this –' he gestured at the window – 'but nothing. Not even a sneeze.'   


'You're right,' Emma said, and scowled into her cup. 'Goddamn it, Jack.'   


Aster, though he wasn't quite so vehement about it, agreed.

 

That night, the decision was taken out of Aster's hands.   


First, Tooth, bedraggled and snow-spattered, arrived quite unexpectedly just as it was getting dark. Aster didn't mention his suspicions, because there was no point – the evidence of what  Emma had been saying was written all over Tooth's face.   


The woman looked  _ miserable, _ her feathers dull and uncared for even beneath the storm's battering, and she said very little, only shivering and accepting a mug of hot tea with a murmur.   


Aster settled her down, explaining Jack would return in a little while, and ignored how much it stung that she didn't even look a tiny bit surprised.   


They sat in silence for an hour or longer, Tooth fidgeting with her cup and Aster staring at the fire, tending it when it got low. Tooth seemed to sense that Aster wasn't in the mood to talk, and so even once she'd warmed up, she remained quiet.   


Then the door opened, and Jack staggered in, and Aster –   


Aster's heart  _ broke, _ because Jack looked ruined. His hair was beyond mussed and straight into hopelessly tangled, there were tears and rips in his favourite blue sweater, and the bags under his eyes were dark bruises, like he'd gotten into a fistfight and earned two shiners for his troubles. Aster surged forward, questions on his tongue, concern and fear thrumming through every part of his body.   


Right before his paw landed on Jack, Jack flinched away. It was only a tiny jerk – one that would have been missed by anyone who didn't live with him day in and day out. But it took everything Aster had to not recoil in horror and hurt. Jack didn't even want Aster to touch him anymore.   


Well. Aster supposed that said more than any words Jack could have come up with.   


Nevertheless, he chivvied Jack inside, pretending nothing was wrong with every fibre of his being, and left the room to gather up every blanket he could find. By the time he was done, both Jack and Tooth were wrapped up warmly, and Aster took his normal seat beside Jack on the couch.   


He told himself that it was the thick pile of blankets that made him sit far away, that the distance was nothing more than the result of trying to warm Jack up.   


'Are you sure you want me to...?' Tooth said, her longest sentence all evening.   


Jack was the one who answered. 'Yeah,' he said, voice ragged. 'It's fine.'   


'This part is – is hard, for a lot of reasons,' Tooth warned. 'If you two would rather –'   


'We're fine,' Aster said, and smiled, strained.   


Tooth nodded, and she looked wretched.   


'Alright, then. This is the story of my arrival in Riverfield, and – and of your parents, Bunny.'   


Aster flinched, but it was too late now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in advance i'm so sorry for next week


	10. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> almost forgot to post today whoops
> 
> also: a bit of ableist language in here - an offscreen character who's never been introduced is referred to as 'simple', implying some kind of cognitive disability. while I'd love to imagine a world where that kind of thing never happens, this world developed from 1984 on. not the most enlightened jumping point, imo. that said, Tooth doesn't mean any harm when she says it, and it can easily be skipped by jumping over 'Now, don't look offended...' and picking up again at 'I am much older...'
> 
> there's also mentions of gore. normally i don't warn for those (since it's implied by the 'violence' major tag), but while i'm here...

'This is the story of my arrival in Riverfield, and – and of your parents, Bunny.   


'When we last left off with my story, I had just met Katherine and Nightlight, and helped them out of a spot of trouble. They'd been ambushed by some raiders, but now that me and my girls had patched up Nightlight and he looked to be fine (certainly, he was awake again), and I'd decided to accompany them to this town Katherine had spoken so fondly of – Riverfield.   


'We travelled east once more, aiming again for Miracle City. Katherine said she had business there, and since we needed to stop and replenish our supplies anyway, it seemed quite sensible. We arrived fairly quickly – I can fly quite quickly in short bursts, but it tires me out just as quick. Katherine's travelling speed was more than suitable, and as we went along, we all became good friends, for all that my girls and I didn't talk much about where we were from.   


'My girls had spent their lives keeping mum on the subject, and when asked, will tell all but our dearest friends that they were born wanderers. Even those we hold dearest only know the cities we've told them of – at least, until two years ago, when Pitch...   


'Well, we still have a ways to go, before I can explain it all. But my girls hardly remembered India (Indira was only five when we left, after all), and as far as they were concerned, they essentially  _ had _ been born wanderers. For my part, I had no desire to explain further than saying we were from Asia, and leaving it at that.   


'Katherine never pushed for more answers than I was willing to give, and that was part of what endeared her so to me. I could see her curiosity – it wasn't hard to learn that her gift was tied somewhat to her emotions, what with the colours, and pretty soon I had a good idea of what colour meant what. And light green – the one that looks like the mint and willow bark soother I use on the children when they come in with scrapes – was a curious colour if I'd ever seen one.   


'We arrived in Miracle City without incident, and left in the same way. As Katherine and I talked, an idea began to grow in my mind; it was all well and good to be a wandering doctor, going where I was needed. When I'd left India, the idea had been attractive in a way you might not understand. Neither of you have ever – I...   


'Not yet. I'm sorry. There's something more important I must get to first.   


'In any case, for as long as I've known you both, and from what everyone has told me, you've always strived to do the right thing. You've always been, at the very heart of it, good, simple people.   


'Now, don't look offended, Jack. I don't mean simple the way the Noorey's second eldest boy is. I mean – straightforward. You are what you appear to be, for the most part.   


'I am much older than you – I turn fifty seven in a few months, and a quarter century or more certainly makes a difference in life experience, my dears. Especially where I came from, and what I've... what I've done. And I can say with no regret or pity for myself that I am not a purely good person.   


'No, truly. Good people do not do as I have done. I am not a bad person, mind you – for all the ruin I've brought, I've done good in equal measure. I'm somewhere in the middle, and that is an alright way to be.   


'But to get to this point, I had to do much good. And so when I left India, I was determined to do as much good as I could, to pay for what I'd done before. And what better way than by using my hands and my gifts the way they should have been used at the start, and heal as many as I could?   


'Now, though, I wondered whether it was better to provide care only in emergencies, only where healing was desperately needed, or to nurture health and keep emergencies from happening. I didn't know. I still don't know the answer. But if I was settling at last, why, what was to stop me from trying to find out?   


'I wanted to be more than a wandering doctor, and I wanted to do more than run. I wanted to build a home and a life for my girls, but perhaps – maybe, just maybe, I was building a life for myself, as well?   


'To that end, I began to make plans for what would become the hospital – this may not be the largest town I've been in, but I run one of the biggest hospitals I've ever seen outside a city, and I'm quite proud of it now.   


'When I told Katherine of my fledgling plans, she was delighted. There were three large buildings in Riverfield, she told me – the town hall, the library, and a building that no one knew what to do with. It was too large for any one family to live in, but too small for two families of any size to cohabitate in. Used for storage last she knew, she thought it would serve perfectly.   


'I admit I had my doubts; a storage building didn't sound like it would be the right configuration for a decent hospital. But, anything that needed to be changed, I would do so, and I'd certainly worked in much less pleasant conditions.   


'Now, with both a destination and a purpose (more than I'd had for years), we continued east from Miracle City, skirting the Great Lakes – I've seen the ocean more than once, and mountains that scrape the sky, and the plains that never seem to end, but I've never seen a lake that large. So far I couldn't see the other end! It was impossible, to me, and my girls were fascinated. Of course, the Lakes won't be safe for much other than travel for a long time yet – the irradiated particles from the air have settled to the bottom, and they killed most of the wildlife that lived there in the Before and changed the rest of it into things not quite safe to brave alone. But it was quite a trial to keep my girls from flying out over it, and I just couldn't keep Padma away!   


'Well, she's always loved the water. None of us are great swimmers – the wings rather get in the way, and hummingbirds clearly aren't waterfowl. But Jack can tell you, Bunny – come summer, you'll find Padma either in the library, hiding from the heat, or up to her neck in the river.   


'Yes, she and Emma make quite a pair in that regard – and in all regards, truly. I've never seen Padma so happy, not even when we first arrived in Riverfield.   


'Back to where I was. So, we left the Great Lakes behind, and began to enter the mountains. It was... it was so different from the mountains and forests of India, but nevertheless, it felt familiar. The way the trees grew together, the undergrowth, the branches twisting into one another, the rain and the sun and the wind, was like returning home.   


'When we came over the Western Pass and saw Riverfield below, I was certain I'd made the right decision. The few times I'd felt like that before had been at the birth of my daughters. It made my head light.   


'Riverfield was welcoming in a way I'd never seen. Oh, certainly there was some suspicion – from what I can tell, my girls and I seemed too good to be true, for all that we were strange. A doctor and her seven near-identical daughters, come to settle in this tiny town, and open a  _ hospital? _ At the time, the only healing available in Riverfield was the kind you could do yourself, or with help from a neighbour. Broken legs and the like were dealt with quite barbarically, in my opinion – harshly set with nothing but a cloth between the teeth for the pain, and god help you if it had to be reset!   


'But we had one very powerful defence, and it was ultimately the thing that settled us so quickly – Katherine and Nightlight. Nightlight had healed quite nicely, with barely a pale scar to show where he'd been wounded, and Katherine wouldn't hear a word against us. With her approval came Nick and Sandy's, and from there – well, it was a much easier time of it than some. Of course, there was the fight with Philomena, but she was quite cantankerous even up until the end, so that is hardly to be unexpected.   


'We weren't the first animutts to come settle in Riverfield, either – the Noorey couple had been there for two years, Harold of course being an owl animutt, and little over a decade earlier there had been a different arrival, one that had been much less easy.   


'Whenever the topic was brought up of those particular animutts, there were uncomfortable glances, bits of fear, and if it was Nick speaking, a great sorrow. I didn't understand just yet, but then, by that point I'd only been in town two months, hardly even settled into the hospital. There was a lot I didn't understand.   


'From what I could tell, there had been some great tragedy, but no one was comfortable speaking about it. Katherine hadn't mentioned it during our journey to Riverfield, and by the time I thought to ask her, she'd left for the season to pass the winter in Mt. Sheafer. Left with no other option, I cornered Nick and asked.   


'The story he relayed was surprising, and long. I understand that it will be painful for you, Bunny, to hear. For that, I am deeply sorry. But it is important – desperately important, my dear – that you hear the entirety of it.   


'Twelve years past, two mutts from far away and their son arrived in Riverfield. The man, a hybrid animutt, and his human-appearing wife, had settled out in the farm Ombric had begun so many years past and had lain fallow until they arrived. They spoke with strange accents, and there was an uncanniness to them – the man looked like no animal anyone had ever seen, and the woman, for all of her kind smiles, carried a quality of – earthiness, and not in the traditional sense. It was a long time before anyone noticed in what way, however, and they were quite tightlipped about why and how they had come to Riverfield.   


'Slowly, they'd become friends with Nick, and through him, Sandy and Katherine, and finally, five years after they arrived, they trusted Nick enough to explain their origins entirely.   


'Evergreen and Helena Bunnymund had travelled to Normerica from Australia, their son Aster in tow, because Australia was dying.   


'Not in the sense that the mutts who lived there were dying off – as far as I know, mutts live there still, in the cities and in one or two settlements in the wastes. But Helena was tied to the earth in a way Nick had only ever seen in her son, and she told him that the physical earth there was sick, and wasting away. It was losing – what do you call it, Bunny, dear? The lifeblood?   


'Earthblood, my apologies. The earthblood was draining away from the continent, piece by piece, and it was killing Helena with it. She couldn't live in a place without the earthblood, and neither could her son. When her parents fell prey to one of the many sicknesses that are common to small settlements, she and her husband had crossed the sea, seeking out a place where the earthblood was thick and strong. They only told their son that they were moving to a new town, nothing more – Helena fearing that she would scare her child.   


'They passed through almost the whole of Normerica, Helena pulled by a distant sense of strength and solidity. They passed other places where the earthblood was good – Cirrus, from the sounds of it, and Cross City, and a dozen others before they arrived in Riverfield. Here, Helena was content, and so it was here they settled, out on the farm to give themselves distance and privacy, and so Helena could exercise her gift without suspicion.   


'Perhaps she would have told you one day, Bunny. I don't know – I never met her. But she and Evergreen were close with Nick before the explanation, and all but family afterwards. There followed four years of happiness. Then – then the unthinkable happened.   


'It was a mid-April morning. Nick remembers the morning having been a rosy one, the sun rising red and ominous in the sky. He was on edge – his son had six years previously moved away to a town towards the south with his wife, and they were expecting their second child any day. He feared the pregnancy would go poorly, as the first one had been quite difficult on Elise, his daughter-in-law.   


'Then, not ten minutes before noon, there was a great outcry in the centre of town and sweeping forward towards Nick's house at a startling rate. He'd only just managed to duck out his front door when the cause of the commotion came into view.   


'At first, he didn't recognise the boy – his normally grey and white fur was soaked red and brown down the front, and Nick's first thought was that whoever it was must have been an inch from death. Then he noticed the tall ears, and fear clutched him in a way that he only remembered when he'd sat outside his wife's door as she'd screamed, bringing their son into the world.   


'No words were spoken, because none were needed. The boy simply turned around and started back the way he'd come, and Nick followed, shouting for the patrol and a horse to be brought at once. He rode to the farm, the boy silent beside him as he ran, and what he found was almost too much to deal with.   


'Blood, everywhere, and the signs of a struggle, but no body. Neither Helena nor Evergreen were anywhere in sight, and their son had no answers – he'd been on his way into town, realised he'd forgotten something or other, and returned home to find this. The patrol arrived a few minutes later, and though there was little hope of finding the two farmers alive, search parties were sent out.   


'This part is – please, I beg you, let me finish it. No matter how much you may want to interrupt, no matter your questions, Aster, please let me finish it before you say anything. I need you to promise.   


'Thank you.   


'It was two hours later that Helena and Evergreen were found. Their bodies were – were mangled, almost beyond recognition, but enough of Helena's hair remained that she could be identified, and then there was no doubt as to whom the body beside her belonged to.   


'Their bodies were found outside a bear's den, where a mid-sized but gaunt bear slept. Nick suspects it had been unable to find enough food after the winter had passed, and had grown desperate enough to attack humans, especially a human who looked – not entirely like a prey animal, but close enough to confuse it. It was put down swiftly, and disposed of. Normally, they wouldn't have wasted the meat if it had attacked livestock, but no one could imagine... well.   


'Helena and Evergreen were buried between a stream and a tall hemlock tree, because no one wished to drag the bodies back in the state they were in. It was horrific enough that the son had found the scene at the farm. They wished to spare him this. The grave was marked with a large, flat stone that Nick placed upright in the earth, and they returned to the farm to give the son the news.   


'Aster – shut down, completely. He insisted he was fine, and demanded that everyone leave, that he wished to grieve alone. Nick was unsure of what to do, but respected his wishes. After a week of no word, Nick was about ready to march down to the farm again when Aster came to the town and insisted on meeting with him. He declared he was running the farm now, and that the arrangement his parents had struck with the town – two thirds of the harvest for the town, one third for them, was too much for a single person. He'd keep one fifth for himself, and no more.   


'Nick was bewildered – the child he'd known was gone, for all that Aster was still sixteen, and he didn't know the man who stood before him. He was quiet and serious, in a way the boy had never been, and there was a closed off look to him that deflected questions. Nick tried to convince Aster to keep a quarter, but Aster insisted on a fifth, and would accept no argument.   


'That year, the harvest occurred precisely as it had the year past, save for the absence of Evergreen and Helena, and that was how it was for the next two years, after which I arrived.   


'I hadn't met Aster – hadn't even known he'd existed, other than the off-hand mentions of the farmer who lived outside the town. He hadn't come to town once in the time I had been there. I'd had no idea he was only nineteen, or had suffered so much.   


'Nick was hurting deeply at the entire thing – at the loss of his two dear friends, and in a different way entirely, the loss of a third. It was then that he asked me if I could...   


'There is something I haven't told you. There's a lot I haven't told you, of course, but this is about my gifts.   


'I can fly, and speak in your minds and feel your emotions at a touch. Already, that's so much more than many mutts have. But I can – I have a special connection, with memories. I think it might be part of who I was – am still, I suppose – elsewhere. I can draw them forth in someone's mind, help them remember things. You might recall, Bunny, that I did something similar the day of your wedding.   


'When I moved here, and met with Nick and explained my intentions of opening a hospital, I was more open than I'd been in – goodness, years and years. I didn't tell him much about my history, but I kept no secrets about my gifts.   


'Now, sitting in his workshop, he asked me if I could do anything for Aster. I didn't know what I could do – but the story... in some ways, the story reminded me of my own. I wanted to do what I could.   


'I promised Nick I would try.   


'That spring, my hospital was as ready as it was ever going to be, and I declared my intentions to establish a baseline for anyone who wished to use my services. Unsurprisingly, almost the entire town (save the ever stubborn, frustrating Philomena Punxsutawny) said they wished to, and I sent a message to Aster at his farm, offering the same.   


'Two days after the message was delivered, he himself arrived in town, entering my hospital with the posture of a man both intensely nervous at being in public and very intent on showing none of his nerves. He was tall, taller than Nick, and though he was young and healthy-looking, he was solemn. He answered my questions haltingly – normally, I'd have my daughters help me, but this was one patient I intended to treat alone.   


'I explained the touch telepathy and empathy, and asked permission to use it to help myself establish a baseline. He agreed, more than a little hesitant, but allowed me to take his hand.   


'The grief that hit me then was overwhelming. It was like the grief I'd felt for my own parents, but magnified, as if the grief over my actions and the grief over the loss of my first home were melded and woven all together with that first great mourning and become insurmountable. What was worse, somehow, was the loneliness, and the – I don't know the right word. It was like feeling the most emotional mind I'd ever touched and the least, all at once. The emotions were there, but blocked off. Here was a man who was breaking. I knew, with a doctor's certainty and a mother's heart, that he'd die of this if I did nothing.   


'But what could I do? I've never found a cure for an emotion, save for dealing with it, and I was utterly unequipped to deal with this. The only thing that would heal it was time and care, and I was gripped with a sudden fear that he didn't have the time he'd need.   


'I panicked, and in that moment, I did something I have regretted every day of my life since. I took this wonderful gift of mine – this gift meant for healing, for remembrance – and reversed it.   


'I reached in, and dimmed the memory of his parent's deaths. Not enough to make him forget it – I can't take away a memory, thank god. But enough that the details became distant, I thought. Enough that it was like years and years had passed, that he'd had the time he needed to recover.   


'The man blinked at me, blissfully unaware of what I'd done, and there was – a spark, in his eyes, that hadn't been there before. He would live. He would overcome the grief.   


'He left me with a small and uncertain smile, and I spent the rest of the day weeping over what I had done.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahahaha fuck i'm sorry


	11. Intermission: Remembrance I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry sorry sorry

Aster sat still, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing.   


He could hear Jack's breathing beside him, a little unsteady, like he was fighting back tears; Tooth's breathing was all but hiccoughs now, and there was the sound of tiny fingers scrubbing at skin, the sound of her wiping at her eyes.   


He struggled to remember that day, but – there was so little, and it was so grey, he realised. And  _ still, _ the pain was a physical ache in his chest, worse now for having heard – having heard –   


'Ye,' he began, but couldn't think of what came after.   


'Give it back,' Jack said loudly beside him, and Aster flinched, startled back into the world. Jack was leaning forward, a fierce snarl twisting his face, and it was surreal, to see so angry an expression directed at Tooth.   


'What?' Aster said, but Jack ignored him.   


'Give it back,' Jack repeated, hands clenching and unclenching in his blankets. 'Give Aster his memory back, right now.'   


Tooth looked miserable. 'I don't know if I can,' she said. 'It's not gone, just dimmed.'   


'You don't know for sure, do you?' Jack snapped out. 'You didn't know what you were doing then, you just did it. And you never asked what he remembered, did you? Did you?!'   


Aster still had no words, and everything was bewildering to him now. Tooth was staring at Jack like she'd never seen him before.   


'Because he didn't know!' Jack shouted, rising a bit into the air with his anger. 'When he told me what had happened, he said they never found the bodies! You made him  _ forget!' _   


Outside, a particularly strong gust of wind rattled against the ice windows, and the sound made them all flinch. Tooth somehow managed to look more horrified than before, and when she looked at Aster, her violet gaze hurt to meet.   


'Is that true, Aster?' she asked, almost soundlessly.   


Aster nodded. He was incapable of anything else.   


She made a noise like she'd been run through with a sword, and sprang into the air. 'My god,' she said through her hand, which was clasped tightly over her mouth. 'Oh my god. What have I done?'   


'Fix it,' Jack demanded, his voice little more than a growl. 'Give it back to him. Right now, or so help me, Toothiana, I will –'   


It was getting cold in the room, and Tooth came over gingerly, dropping to the floor and walking, like she didn't dare fly.   


'I can try,' she whispered, and held out a hand. 'If you'll let me, Aster.'   


Aster stared at her hand; there, at last, would be the memory of his parents, something he hadn't even known he'd lost.   


His chest throbbing with pain and ghosts both, he took her fingers in his paw.   


Her mind brushed against his, and though it was a soft touch, it took everything he had to not physically jerk away from her. She apologised, over and over, an endless lilt of English and her native tongue echoing in his head, and carefully, so carefully, she drew the memory forward.   


Suddenly, the grey disappeared in a bloom of red, the destroyed door hanging off its hinges so vivid Aster thought he could remember every splinter. North, telling him his parents were dead. The full weight of the grief that had struck him then, the absolute loss that had fuelled his attempt not twenty-four hours later to drown himself in the earthblood, and then he choked, because he'd never known just how weighty that grief could be.   


That wasn't true. He had known, once. He'd just been made to forget.   


Tooth staggered back from him, giving a pained little cry, and Aster matched it, paws clapping into place over his ears.   


He could hear his dam's voice more clearly than he had since she'd been alive, and his sire's, and he realised that it hadn't just been the day Tooth had dimmed. She'd dimmed – all of it, everything. Every memory of his parents, things he'd cherished so deeply, suddenly seemed brighter and truer. He remembered the blue flecks amidst all the grey in his dam's eyes, the precise shade of cream that coloured his sire's throat. The sound of her footsteps in the grass, the barks and yips of his laughter.   


The sight  _ (and smell, god, the smell) _ of all that blood, coating the floor. The earthblood refusing to take him. Waking up after a long darkness into sunlight, and silence, where no tree and no flower spoke, as if in imitation of his  _ (dead, dead, of course they're dead, ye should never have hoped –) _ parents' voices, now forever silenced.   


He got to his feet, very slowly, feeling like his bones might crack beneath the weight. He could remember now – everything, every night spent screaming himself awake, every day spent waiting to hear a voice that would never speak again, the hours spent kneeling and sobbing beside his  _ parents' graves. _   


He looked up at last, and whatever expression he wore made Tooth flinch.   


'I need to go,' he said hoarsely, and felt Jack's hand settle on his arm. It was a gentle touch, and hurt all the more for it.   


'I don't think that's a good idea, sweetheart,' Jack said softly, and his fingers curled into Aster's fur. 'Come on, we can –'   


'No,' Aster said tersely. 'I – I can't stay here. I need to –'   


'Aster –'   


_ 'No, _ Jack!' Aster snarled, a rasp of sound. 'I – I can't be here. With her. With ye.'   


Jack drew back like he'd been bitten. 'What?'   


'I'm leaving. Dunno when I'll be back,' Aster said, and when he looked, Jack looked stunned. 'Please don't follow me.'   


Tooth opened her mouth, and Aster growled at her. She fluttered backwards. It was, tone and timbre and volume and depth, a perfect match for the sound his sire had made when angry.   


He turned and stalked towards the door, opening it; snow stung at him through his fur, and it was almost enough to make him think of staying, almost painful enough.   


It had nothing on the cracked and splintered feeling in his chest, though, and he'd taken his first step outside when Jack cried out, 'Please, Aster! You can't go out in this!'   


'Ye've been doing it for days,' Aster spat back. 'I'll live.'   


Then he shut the door behind him and ran.

 

He had no idea where he was when he finally stopped. He'd simply closed his eyes and let the earthblood beneath guide him. Like this, in the muted silence of the thick snow – even the wind unable to break the hush – he could almost see it in his head, a web of white and green beneath the earth, or rivers and creeks. A watershed, almost, and there were two lakes he could see.   


The one he left behind, deepest beneath Robin's roots, was the larger. But the second was sizeable, in its own way, and it sang to him as he struggled through the deep snow towards it.

The cold hurt, creeping through his fur and stabbing deep, but his heart hurt worse. It beat and beat, and with every pump, it felt like needles swam in his veins. There was glass buried in his lungs, and when at last he reached the second pool of earthblood, he collapsed in the middle of it.   


He huddled in a little divot that at least blocked the wind, constructed of a pile of stone and an old, weathered tree, and he reached down through the snow until his thick nails could claw at the frozen earth.   


The earthblood welled up at his call and sat quiet beneath him, silent, unshakeable support. The snow piled around him, stinging fiercer than ever, but the earthblood was warm, and protected him from the worst of it. Without it, Aster thought he might freeze to death.   


He recoiled from the thought, from everything, and hunched into himself.   


He knew that he couldn't live with the yawning pit inside him. He didn't think anyone could – it was too wide, the chasm too deep to be borne. Aster was no longer a young buck of sixteen, though, and as he sat in the storm and his own pain both, he grit his teeth. Had he not fought Pitch and overcome him? Had he not travelled from one side of the continent to the other and back again?   


Nick had said once that Evergreen and Helena would be proud of him. Aster, with the pale, dimmed ghosts of his memory, had agreed. Now, though, he could remember the way his dam's eyes had crinkled at the corners when he'd first made a flower bloom, and the vast pride that had puffed out his sire's chest the first time Aster had beaten him fairly in a race, and he  _ knew _ now they would have. And he knew, the way he knew the earth lived and flowed and grew beneath him, that it would have killed them all over again, to see him crushed beneath this weight.   


So he would not bear this chasm, this hollow valley in his chest. He must cross it.   


He forced himself to remember the day his parents had died in its entirety. He left no detail unturned in his mind, and met each stinging, jarring thought without turning aside.

He could not. He owed it to – so many people. To Evergreen and Helena. To Nick, who hadn't known what he'd asked Tooth to do, from the sounds of it, and to Tooth, who hadn't known what she'd done until it was far too late. To Katherine and Nightlight, to Sandy, to Baby Tooth and Emma, to –

To Jack.

He stumbled over the thought as it lay shiningly blue in his way. He tried to step around it, continue the work he'd begun, but it would not budge. He'd have to deal with it in just the same way.

He instead examined it, mentally picturing it like a stone, picking it up in his paws and turning it over. It was hard and knobbly, comprised of so many different things – his hurt at Jack's distrust, his concern and fear, and like everything about him when it came to Jack, his love.

And his grief.

Jack had died, after all. Not permanently, but he'd been  _ gone. _ And Aster hadn't realised at the time (couldn't have realised, as he'd forgotten) how much that grief matched the one he'd felt for his parents.

He held the two emotions in his mind, battered between the two, and as he did so, they bled together, green blending into blue, and he choked at the pain of it. He'd lost everything twice – once, his family, then again, when he lost his future.

The earthblood pulsed beneath him, like a second heartbeat stuttering to life, and it startled him into opening his eyes. When he'd blinked away the snow, he realised what was in front of him.

'Aster,' Jack whispered, kneeling before him, and his voice broke the hush of the storm like tree trunks groaning. 'Please.'

Aster swallowed. 'Jack...'

'Please, please, don't do this,' Jack continued, pale hand not quite invisible in the swirling snow as he reached out, but almost. 'I don't know – I can't do anything, but please, let me be here.'

Aster bit his lip 'til it bled. 'I can't,' he said at last, unable to untangle the grief from the hurt, the love from the fear. 'I need –'

'Goddamn it, Aster,' Jack snapped, blue eyes blazing, and around them the storm began to shake like it was furious. 'Stop it, okay? You need someone here! You can't do this alone!'

'What, the way ye've been?' Aster snarled, and Jack flinched. 'Do ye really think I haven't noticed the way ye come home looking like ye've been –' he didn't even know what it looked like, only that Jack was  _ hurting. _ 'Ye won't say it, even now,' he said instead to Jack's shocked face. 'I don't see why I should tell ye  _ anything. _ Go.'

'Ast –'

'Leave me be!' Aster roared. 

'No!' Jack roared back, and around them, the storm  _ howled, _ branches cracking and breaking beneath the wind's push and the snow's weight.

They glared at one another, impasse evident in Jack's snow-white knuckles and Aster's gritted teeth. At last, Aster huffed out a breath; this was going nowhere.

'If ye won't go, I will,' he said, and made to stand.

'Don't you  _ dare –' _ Jack began, reaching out and grabbing Aster's wrist.

Aster yelped in pain and surprise as ice spread up his arm, pinching and stinging at the skin beneath fur, but worse than that, worse than his own sense of betrayal and fury, was Jack's reaction.

Jack flung himself backwards with a scream, and in the sound was – horror, disgust, anger, so many different things so closely knitted together that Aster was utterly unable to pick them apart. Jack crouched apart from him, staring at his own hand for a moment, then he bowed his head.

Around them, the storm  _ exploded. _

Aster was pushed backwards, away from Jack, until he was pinned by the force of the wind to the tree trunk he'd been huddled against before. The cold grew worse, nearly intolerable, and the snow was snow no longer, slivers of ice flying around and slicing at whatever they could reach.

Aster's fur protected him from the worst of it, but he could see tears appearing in Jack's already tattered sweater, and that was it.   


Who cared any more? Who cared that Jack had kept secrets, who cared that Aster felt betrayed? With the same sense that had guided him to his farm two years past, to consume Pitch in the earthblood, Aster knew that this was a breaking point – something was changing, for good or for ill, and the deciding factor was what Aster did in these few seconds.   


Taking a deep breath of air that burned like fire, it was so cold, he began to struggle forward, refusing to turn away.   


It was hard work. The wind that battered at him was not Jack's playful, loving Wind, and the ice that tried to cut him to ribbons was not Jack's artful frost. But the earthblood came with him, and protected him from the wild lashing, and after what felt like a decade but must have been no more than a span of seconds, Aster knelt in front of Jack, and reached out.   


'Don't touch me,' Jack said dully before Aster's paw could land.   


'Why?' Aster asked, pausing.   


'I hurt you. I'll do it again.' A harsh laugh that was no laughter at all. 'I knew I would. Was only a matter of time.'   


'What's happening, Jack?'   


Jack curled in on himself. 'It's getting worse,' he whispered at last, and his voice still cut through the storm to Aster's ears. 'It's – been getting worse, for a while now. It started just before Midwinter.'   


The wind was calming some as Jack spoke, the ice gentling to snow, but it was still cutting when Jack said, 'I'm scared, Aster. I've been scared.'   


Aster's paw clenched, from how badly he wanted to reach out. 'Why didn't ye say anything?'   


Jack looked up at last, and his face was gaunt, haunted. 'Why didn't you ask?'   


Aster flinched, but Jack was already shaking his head. 'That's not fair,' he said, almost before finishing his question. 'You didn't know. How could – you're not...' Jack shook his head. 'That sounded like I was blaming you. It's not your fault.'   


'I wanted to ask,' Aster said, but it felt like an excuse. 'I just didn't know how.' That was worse.   


'I know,' Jack replied, and his voice was so, so tired. 'I wouldn't have answered, anyway.' His eyes fell to his lap. 'We're... Aster, I'm breaking,' he said at last, the words stumbling. 'I'm not safe to be around.'   


'That's not true,' Aster tried to argue, but Jack snorted, and looked pointedly at Aster's arm, still glittering and sharp with ice.   


'It's growing, Aster,' he said with a brief, aborted gesture at the snow around them. 'My ice. I – I saw Other Jack last week.'   


The announcement shook Aster to the core – he'd almost forgotten the way he'd seen Other Jack and Other Aster some months before, the night before his wedding. It felt like years had passed.   


'He said it's growing, like yours was growing two years ago,' Jack said, head bowed low. 'Only, I don't know how – it's so much bigger now, Aster, it's controlling wind and water and I don't have any idea how to do  _ any _ of it –' he was babbling now, words tripping over one another as they tumbled from his mouth. 'And it's connected to the Joy thing, but it's scaring me, what it's becoming, and that makes it wilder, which scares me more, and it just keeps going, and I –' A bit of a hiccough. 'I –'   


Aster broke, then, and reached out, gathering Jack into his arms.   


'No, don't!' Jack cried out, trying to struggle away, and ice was spreading up Aster's arms again, colder than just about anything he'd ever felt, but he grit his teeth and held on.   


Jack went limp after a moment, slumping against Aster, and the ice halted inches from Aster's throat. 'Why would you –'   


'Because ye came after me,' Aster said, shivering violently but not letting go. 'Because I've failed ye, and ye've failed me, and we've got to try and fix this.'   


Very slowly, Jack's hands came up, and dug into the fur of Aster's back.   


'I'm so sorry about your parents, Aster,' he said, and the words choked a sob out of Aster's voice.   


'I knew they were dead, Snowbird,' Aster replied, words ragged. 'I  _ knew _ it. I let meself hope, because they'd never found the bodies, but even if I'd never gotten the memory back –' his paws dug into the tattered threads of Jack's sweater. 'I should have known. I shouldn't have hoped.' He swallowed. 'I'm sorry I didn't notice yer gift changing.'   


'I hid it from you,' Jack whispered. 'I didn't want you to hate me, to be scared of me the way I'm – I'm scared of myself.' The ice was receding now, sloughing off Aster's fur like snow, and Jack clambered into his lap, the two of them tangling themselves as closely as they could. 'I'm – god, I'm a terrible person. I should have told you. I'm so sorry, Aster, I'm – please don't go, please –'   


'I'm not going anywhere, Snowbird,' Aster whispered. 'Jack. I'm here. I'm not going, and ye're not going. We'll fix this. We  _ will.' _   


'How do we fix this?' Jack asked, words like darts in Aster's chest.   


'Very carefully?' Aster offered weakly, and Jack laughed, a cut off sound of surprise.   


'Did you just make a  _ joke? _ Right now?'   


'Did it help any?'   


'You have no idea.'   


They sat there for some time longer, long enough for the wind to die down, the snow to fall straight instead of stinging and flying about.   


'Was the storm ye?' Aster asked, and Jack shook his head.   


'No,' he said shakily. 'It – it's supposed to be much, much worse. That's what I've been doing – it would have buried us all. I don't know what I'm doing, exactly, but I can make it... less, somehow? Less strong, less fierce. But it takes a lot out of me, and when I've been so scared while doing it, it's been – really hard.'   


Aster kissed Jack's cheek hesitantly, unsure of if he was still allowed. Jack leaned into the touch, though, and kissed the corner of Aster's mouth in return.   


'What do we do now?' Jack asked a few minutes later, his temple leaned against Aster's. 'About – about us? Your memories?' A hint of anger crept back into his voice. 'Tooth?'   


'Tooth didn't know,' Aster said, firm. 'She was trying to do the right thing, and even if it was a terrible thing she did –' he swallowed. 'Reckon she saved me life,' he said at last. 'I'd already tried to do one stupid thing at that point, and I have no idea how much longer I would have...'   


'What stupid thing?'   


Aster took a deep breath. 'The same thing I did to get rid of Pitch,' he admitted. 'Tried to – make the earthblood take me.'   


Jack was silent, then he sighed. 'Guess I can't hate her forever,' he said, and sounded so  _ grudging _ about it that Aster had to laugh a little.   


Jack smiled at him, and the snow stopped falling.   


'So here's what we're going to do, love,' Aster said. 'Ye and me, we're going home. We're going to bed, and in the morning, we're going to talk about what we're doing, where we're going. We're going to tell each other when we're scared, or hurt, and angry. No more of this thinking I'd hate ye business,' he said, and nosed at Jack's cheek. 'I married ye because I'm going to love ye until the day I die, and past that. I made ye a promise. I'm not going to break it just because ye can make a little ol' snowstorm.'   


'You call this  _ little?' _ Jack said, waving a hand around him.   


'Ye said this one wasn't ye,' Aster replied peacefully. 'Gonna take a lot more to impress me, Snowbird.'   


Jack laughed, eyes watering. 'What, saving the entire valley wasn't enough?'   


'That, I'll be impressed by,' Aster confirmed, and smiled. 'And it's going to take a little while, love. We're going to mess up, ye know that. We're going to fight, and we're going to make up, and we won't always know what's going to happen next. But do ye remember what ye told me, in Plainston, after I could hear the plants again?'   


Jack frowned, then his eyes softened. 'I can't wait to find out,' he said, his voice echoing against the memory in Aster's head, and he kissed Aster then, love and apology and fear and hope in every instant of the motion.   


'And what about – the memory? Tooth?' Jack insisted once he'd pulled away.   


'It was a lot of memories, Jack,' Aster said. 'It's – going to take some time to get through, I reckon. But I promise to talk to ye if they get bad, or if I – if I'm having trouble, yeah?'   


'You better, because I'm going to do the same,' Jack murmured. 'When the ice gets bad, when the storming is coming, I'll tell you. Okay?'   


'Okay,' Aster said, and felt a little of the weight lift off him. He thought that might be because he finally had someone to share it with, and shivered. 'And – I'll handle Tooth. We both came off pretty badly, I think.'   


'She hurt you.'   


'She didn't mean to, any more than ye did,' Aster said, as gently as he could. Jack still flinched, but nodded. 'I'm not – not really angry with her. She needs to be told that. I think she's been carrying around a lot of guilt for a long time.'   


'I don't think she would have ever told you, though.'   


'I wouldn't have told someone, either. I'm still not sure why she told us, if ye have to know.'   


Jack began to answer, then frowned. 'Huh,' he muttered. 'Maybe – remember when she started telling us these stories, and I said it was probably leading up to something big?'   


Aster nodded, though the recollection was a little foggy, mostly because Jack had done an excellent job of melting Aster's brain just before.   


'Maybe – maybe she didn't feel she could tell us unless she'd been truthful about  _ everything. _ Which means she did it because it was the right thing. I think that has to be it.' Jack nodded decisively. 'Which means I can forgive her someday.'   


Aster agreed with the sentiment, and would have said so, but weariness was creeping up on him. 'Let's go home, Snowbird,' he said, and Jack floated off him. 'Do ye know the way? I'm – have to admit, not sure where we are.'   


Jack stared at him. 'Aster,' he said slowly, 'you didn't know?'   


'What?'   


Jack went to the tree Aster had huddled against when he'd arrived and began to dig at the snow around the base, towards the pile of stones that had formed the corner that had protected Aster from the wind.   


No, not a pile of stones. A single stone, flat and upright, a damp grey as Jack brushed away the snow. And the tree was a hemlock, Aster realised, staring.   


'I thought you knew where you were,' Jack said quietly, floating above Aster's parents' graves. 'I recognised it from Tooth's story.'   


Aster didn't know how to speak, anymore, and Jack drew near, and took his paw.   


'Thank you,' he said into the hushed night, and it took Aster a moment to realise that it wasn't to him. 'For keeping him safe until I could find him. And for bringing him here in the first place. I'm sorry I never got to meet you, Evergreen, Helena.'   


Aster choked, and Jack wrapped his arms around Aster's neck, dragging him into a tight hug.   


'Hey, at least we know where it is now, huh?' Jack said into Aster's ear. 'Too bad we – we don't have one for my Ma. And Dad's grave is in Burgess, so.'   


'We'll put markers here,' Aster said hoarsely. 'Yer dam never got one, and I think – North would be happy to have a little piece of his son nearby, even if it's just a stone.'   


Jack sucked in a deep breath. 'Are you sure?'   


'Definitely,' Aster nodded, brushing his chin over Jack's shoulder.   


'Okay,' Jack said in a small voice, and they went home.

 

Tooth was still there when they got there, and though she flinched at Jack's venomous look, Aster put his paw on Jack's hand, placating.   


'Bunny,' she said, 'I know – it's not really worth anything. But I'm sorry.'   


'Ye didn't know what ye'd did,' Aster said. 'I'm not angry, Tooth. I'm hurt, but I'm not angry.'   


She nodded, her body drooped like she didn't have the strength to stand straight. 'I've done so many terrible things in my life, my dear,' she whispered. 'I regret none of them as much as I regret what I've done to you.'   


'Sometimes family hurt one another,' Aster replied, just as softly. 'It doesn't make it right, but ye gave me memory back, and ye told the truth. That doesn't fix it, either, but it means I can forgive ye someday.'   


Tooth nodded.   


'Jack and I need some time to work through this,' he said, then paused. 'How much did ye know about Jack's gift growing?'   


Tooth's head snapped up. 'What?'   


'It wasn't like that, Aster,' Jack said hastily. 'I didn't – I didn't tell her anything, not really. She's a doctor, and I thought – I might hurt someone eventually. Like I did.' He hung his head. 'I just told her I was working on something, and that it might be dangerous. That's all.'   


'What's wrong with your gift?' she pressed, looking at Jack with concern (but no fear, Aster noted with relief, knowing how much Jack had dreaded  _ Aster _ becoming afraid.)   


'I don't trust you enough right now to tell you that,' Jack said, no apology in his tone, but no harshness either. It was plain fact, and Tooth accepted it with only the tiniest wince.   


'Give us a month,' Aster said, and Tooth looked to him, violet eyes wide. 'Then come back, and we'll talk. Ye'll tell us the rest of it, yeah?'   


'You'd –' she paused, then continued in a tiny voice, 'you'd want me to?'   


'Yes,' Jack said, and when she looked at him, he smiled. 'Can't leave us hanging now, can you?'   


'No, I suppose not,' she agreed, and straightened. It looked difficult, but they'd all done difficult things tonight, so Aster suspected this was a little one, in comparison. 'The snow's stopped, so I'll be going.'   


'Take care of yerself,' Aster murmured, meaning it, and she looked a little stunned as she left, like Aster had slapped her instead of wishing her well.   


'Sometimes I think you're too forgiving, sweetheart,' Jack said, when she'd gone. Aster looked at him, and Jack shook his head.   


'Maybe,' Aster shrugged. 'I'd rather be forgiving than bitter.'   


Jack smiled at him, face gone soft in a way Aster hadn't seen in too long. 'I like you the way you are, too,' he said, and held out his hand. 'Come on, you look tired, and I  _ know _ I am. Let's go to bed.'   


Aster took his hand and followed him, up the stairs, beneath the blankets, and into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next week will be another intermission (a double intermission event! :0 ). Three more chapters to go, loves!


	12. Intermission: Remembrance II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, hopefully this makes up a little for last week - a nice, kind interlude (mostly) before the last big boom.

_ 'Are ye serious?' Aster asked, staring at the table. 'Again? Right now?' _

_ He looked around the little room; it was precisely as he remembered it. Squat, round table, two seats (more stools, really) set opposite one another, in a room made of dirt and moss. The door across the way was open, and Aster stared at it uncomprehendingly for a moment. _

_ As if on cue, there was a huffing noise and then someone came around the jamb. _

_ 'Should have set that spell up from the first,' Other Aster grumbled. He looked much better put together than last time Aster had dropped in unexpectedly. His green robe was immaculately arrayed, his brass, egg-shaped buttons all in place, and his purple sash was hung with the golden egg pocketwatch. 'Yer universe is a persistent one,' Other Aster continued, taking his seat. 'None of the other ones have kept rocking up at all hours of the day –' _

_ 'Er,' said Aster. _

_ 'Are we back to this, then?' Other Aster asked shortly. _

_ 'No,' Aster replied. 'I just – don't really know why I'm here?' _

_ 'Well, as far as we can tell, ye aren't here for yerself.' _

_ 'Is something wrong?' _

_ 'Crikey, ye'd think every time ye came here would be on the brink of disaster,' Other Aster said, then paused at the look Aster shot him. 'Don't ye glare at me, last time wasn't a disaster.' _

_ 'It was me wedding, it better not have been,' Aster muttered. _

_ 'I'd ask how that's been going, but I've had me ears bashed halfway to Perth with Jacko's ranting,' Other Aster said, and Aster flinched. _

_ 'I'm not sure that's yer bizzo.' _

_ 'Yer marriage? Thank god it's not,' Other Aster snorted in a sound that Aster knew best in Jack's voice. 'But that's not been the real problem here, and ye know it.' _

_ 'I'm not seeing how ye can help with that,' Aster said sharply. 'Seeing as it's something involving Jack, and not me.' _

_ 'No, that's for  _ ye _ to do,' Other Aster said. 'Really, right now, Jacko's helping yer Jack best he can, but there's – well, there's been some strange things happening, things we weren't expecting.' _

_ 'Is he in danger?' Aster demanded, sitting forward, and Other Aster rolled his eyes. _

_ 'Well, ye still worry about his wellbeing before yer own, so I reckon yer marriage isn't wasted,' he said, making Aster flinch again. 'But the answer isn't so simple as ye might like it to be, and I have to admit, it's not me area of expertise. Ye know us,' and now Other Aster grinned. 'Springtime and flowers, and I suppose for ye, some more affinity with the animal-half of living things. But Jacko is  _ Winter, _ me boy. Reckon that's true no matter what universe we're in.' _

_ Aster nodded slowly. 'Ye're saying it's – manifesting different,' he said. 'Like with me and ye. Me, with the animal affinity. Living things all around and on the earth, not just the earth itself.' _

_ 'Knew I couldn't be dim for too long, even if ye don't have me count of years to help ye out,' Other Aster said with such pride that Aster didn't know if he should be offended or complimented. 'Precisely. Yer universe is very different from ours, in a number of respects, and so it stands to reason that yer magic will act differently.' _

_ 'So how is Snowbird's magic different from yer Jack's?' _

_ 'Is that how we're differentiating them now? I'll just call mine Jacko,' Other Aster shrugged. 'And... well, we aren't sure yet. Or Jacko's not telling me everything. Secretive bugger, until he's ready to tell ye.' _

_ 'So I'm learning with mine.' _

_ 'Oh, yers isn't so closed off,' Other Aster said, shaking his head. 'And the magic’s – more. Which is saying a  _ lot, _ as Jacko's no slouch in the power department, me boy. Seen a couple different universes very similar to mine, and in most of 'em, Jacko helped us out a fair bit, but not like here.' _

_ 'What do ye mean?' _

_ 'Well, Jack took some time to convince around here,' Other Aster shrugged. 'Wasn't very receptive, and we'd – er, well, we'd never gotten along, precisely. Didn't think he'd be much help, to be honest. Strewth, I was wrong about that one.' Other Aster smiled, an expression heavy with fond reminiscence. 'Almost blew Pitch to the Moon and back before Pitch scarpered. He's still around, mind ye, but he's pretty wary 'round me Jacko now.' _

_ Aster suspected  _ to the Moon and back _ wasn't hyperbole, so he settled for a low whistle. _

_ 'And Snowbird's – more powerful?' _

_ 'Not precisely. His magic just covers more.' _

_ 'Like?' _

_ 'Jacko can't do rain,' Other Aster said. 'And he's got the Wind, but the damn thing doesn't do half the things yer Jack's can. There's some other things, I suspect, but I don't want to spill the good oil before I know whether s'true or not.' _

_ 'Fair,' Aster sighed. 'But how am I supposed to help him? I want to, so badly,' he said at Other Aster's look. 'But – I can't fly, or make storms, or any of this. I wouldn't know how to, if I could.' _

_ 'Ye don't need his magic to understand him,' Other Aster said, rolling his eyes. 'Ye never did before, why would ye now? And more important, ye've got a better idea of what's going on than any of us have.' _

_ 'What? I've got no bleeding clue what's happening!' _

_ 'But yer gift grew, too,' Other Aster pointed out. 'Never worked like that for anyone 'round here. And ye're the only one in yer  _ universe _ that's happened to, at least who was aware of it.' _

_ 'What does that mean?' Aster demanded. Other Aster was silent. 'Tell me – bloody oath, what the hell am I supposed to call ye? Other Aster sounds ridiculous out of me gob.' _

_ Other Aster snorted again, looking amused with an expression that he'd probably learned from his Jack. 'I'd tell ye to call me Bunny like everyone else, but since ye go around flaunting half our true name anyway, it might be best for ye to call me Aster.' _

_ 'Our what?' _

_ 'Yer human, ye don't get it. Just – don't go dropping around the first one, yeah?' now Other Aster looked apprehensive. 'No one knows that ye've got the right one, and it'd drive me mental if I had to hear everyone calling me that.' _

_ Aster had no idea what was going on, so he chose (quite sensibly, in his opinion) to ignore the extra information. 'Alright, then. Aster. That's – that's bizarre, to be true.' _

_ 'Fair dinkum,' Other Aster agreed. _

_ 'No, don't distract me,' Aster said, realising that he'd been played. 'What did ye mean, before?' _

_ 'The others already grew,' Other Aster said, and fiddled with his pocket watch. 'It was smaller, though, and it was long ago. The only other one to grow anything like ye two was Tooth, and she had no idea that was happening.' _

_ Aster had flinched at Tooth's name, and Other Aster sighed. _

_ 'Ye know, then.' _

_ 'Ye knew?' _

_ 'Course I knew,' Other Aster said heavily. 'Couldn't say anything. Can't tell ye how much it pissed me off. When I found out, had a bit of a blue with our Tooth, which didn't help matters any, since our Tooth couldn't have done that in the first place.' _

_ For the first time, Aster thought he might have an inkling of how hard it was, what Other Aster was doing. How many ways that events not even belonging to him might have strained and tested his life. 'Sorry,' he said, trying to encompass everything in one word. _

_ Other Aster, probably because at the root of it they were the same person, understood. 'Don't ye worry none,' he said, and grinned. 'Was years ago now, and we're fine now. She'll be relieved to hear ye've got it back – ye do have it back, don't ye?' _

_ 'Yeah,' Aster agreed. 'It was – a lot. Is. Will be, I reckon.' _

_ 'Well, we're here,' Other Aster said, reaching over and patting Aster's wrist. 'Reckon we'll be here for some yonks yet. We knew it was a danger, when we interfered in another universe practically on our level.' _

_ 'Meaning?' _

_ 'Yer story's got a ways to go. A lot of loose threads, anyway. Just remember something for me, please?' _

_ 'What?' Aster asked, curious when Other Aster was quiet a moment. _

_ 'Just because yer a story, and we're a story, doesn't mean we're not people, yeah? Interfering this way – ye lose track, at some point, that the people's lives ye're interfering in are  _ lives. _ Yer universe was the first in a long time to remind me. So don't forget.' _

_ 'I won't,' Aster promised, and meant it. _

_ 'Now, shoo,' Other Aster said, snapping out of his maudlin mood back into business. 'And remember – ye're who Jack has to depend on. It'll be hard, but ye've got it.' _

_ 'Thanks, Aster,' Aster said with a grin, ignoring the bizarre sensation of calling someone else by his own first name, and as the edges began to dim and darken as he slipped into true sleep, he could have sworn Other Aster grinned back. _

  
  


'So,' Aster said, setting a mug in front of Jack the next morning. He took the seat beside him, instead of his usual seat across the table. 'Do ye want me to start, or do ye wanna go?'

'Oh, god,' Jack said piteously, curling his fingers around the fired clay. 'Is there more? Did I miss something else with you?'

The guilt rang in his voice like metal clashing, and Aster set his paw atop Jack's wrist.

'No, ye didn't,' he said, once he was sure he had Jack's attention. 'But I – well, I saw...'

'You saw Other Aster?' Jack asked, picking up on Aster's meaning instantly and leaning forward.

'S'not the first time, either,' Aster said, earning himself a sharp look. 'Right before our wedding, but that was – I don't think that was about this.'

'What, like the night before?' Jack asked, then made a face. 'Okay, that's fair you didn't tell me. We were kind of busy that day.' A flash of his old mischief lit his face, a welcome change from the misery Aster had watched helplessly for weeks. 'And we really weren't thinking about anything like that the night of, huh?'

Even two years into his relationship with Jack, sometimes the looks Jack could give him would reduce Aster a red mess through his fur. 'Aye, ye're not wrong,' he managed, and Jack grinned up at him when his voice cracked a bit in the the middle of  _ wrong. _ 'Belt up,' he said exasperatedly when Jack began to snicker.

'So what did you talk about then? And now?'

'Well, before – I guess I needed to talk to meself,' Aster said uncomfortably. 'Though, Other Jack was helpful, in his way.'

'What about?'

'Wedding jitters,' Aster said, derisive. 'Not the usual ones, but...'

Jack tilted his head. 'What, worried I'd run off?' He made a face that Aster couldn't place, until he added, 'like Miriam?'

'No,' Aster said emphatically, and closed his paw more tightly around Jack's wrist, rubbing small circles with his thumb. 'I don't want ye thinking that, because that's not true. We didn't even know about yer granddam then, me love.'

'Then what was the problem?' Jack asked, looking confused. 'Because let me tell you, I spent that entire night convinced you'd decide you could do way better than me.'

'Never,' Aster said, and leaned in without thought, kissing Jack's temple. He'd wondered, after the shakiness of the night before, the distance they'd mistakenly cultivated, if that level of daily intimacy would remain between them. The kiss in the forest could have been a result of adrenaline.

Now, Aster knew they had less to repair in this marriage than he'd feared, because Jack leaned into the touch like it was the last time he'd ever get it, desperate for the touch. Aster nuzzled in, and Jack sighed.

'Don't ye ever worry about that, Snowbird,' Aster said. 'I can be angry, I can be upset, and I will always,  _ always _ love ye.'

'That'll get drilled into my brain eventually,' Jack said weakly, and turned his head, kissing the edge of Aster's chin. 'So what had your ears in a knot, then?'

'Jack,' Aster said, trying to find the best way to put it. 'We – well, we both  _ died, _ Snowbird. I was scared of losing ye, or ye losing me, and I have to tell ye, I didn't know which was worse. Still don't. But Other Jack said that the memories we made might be all we have someday, so to try and make them the best we could.'

'Why is other me so much smarter than – me me?' Jack said, putting on a complaining tone, but it belied a deeper seriousness.

'Ye're plenty smart, love,' Aster said. 'Ye got confused, and scared. I'm still angry, mind ye, and I expect ye're still ticked off at me –'

'Why would I be mad at you?' Jack said, pulling away in surprise. 'You didn't do anything.'

Aster winced, and Jack sighed.

'Nope, we're stopping this right here,' he said loudly, and turned to face Aster completely, cupping his face and tugging him down to eye level. 'I was being dumb.  _ That was not your fault.' _

'I should've –'

'What? What could you have done, Bun-bun?' Jack interrupted. 'I wouldn't have answered any of your questions, I can tell you that for free right now. It was me keeping the secret, it was me sneaking off without telling you, and it was me who hurt you. That wasn't your fault.  _ None of this is your fault.' _

Aster swallowed, Jack's blue eyes boring into his, and tried to find the words that he needed. They wouldn't come.

'There,' Jack said after a long moment, nodding judiciously before sitting back again. He kept a hand on Aster's arm. 'Now you get it.'

Aster didn't feel like he got it at all, but his inability to argue had spoken, quite elegantly, for itself.

'And then last night? When you saw Other Aster again,' Jack reminded him at Aster's blank look.

'Ah, right. That was – about this.'

'What did he tell you?'

'About what's been going on from their end. Yer gift.'

Jack tensed. 'Okay, how  _ much _ did he tell you?'

'About as much as Robin could,' Aster said dryly, and Jack snorted. 'He said Other Jack's been helping ye a bit –'

'If one ominous visit and what felt like an hour of dire warnings counts as help,' Jack muttered darkly.

'Reckon that might just be how they operate,' Aster sighed, and slid Jack's hand down his arm to interlock their fingers. 'They’re not much good at being direct. He said – he said I was the one who had to help ye.'

'How?' Jack asked, looking as bewildered as Aster had felt. 'You can't make storms, or anything.' He squinted, mouth quirking. 'Or can you? Wow, let's talk about not telling each other stuff, sweetheart.'

Despite himself, Aster laughed, and it was worth it for the way Jack practically lit up from the inside, blue eyes shining like lanterns. 'Course not, Snowbird,' Aster said at last, once the chuckles had subsided a bit. 'But apparently we're the only two people in the universe to have our gifts work like this – to grow, anyway.'

Jack's eyes flashed again, but this time, it was in understanding. 'Oh my god,' he said, and dropped his head to the table with a loud thunk. 'I knew that. I  _ knew _ that, and I didn't even think –'

He lifted his head to thump it against the wood again, but Aster slid his paw between Jack's brow and the table, so when Jack dropped again, it was into Aster's waiting paw. 'Didn't think of what?'

'I should have come to you from the beginning,' Jack said, sounding miserable with it. 'Of course you would have understood. What the hell is wrong with me?'

'Yes, ye should have come to me,' Aster said firmly, 'but ye panicked. Like I was saying, I'm still angry about that. That doesn't mean I don't love ye, or that we won't fix it. Ye'll get a handle on it, me love, just like I got a handle on mine.'

'Stop being so reasonable,' Jack said, sounding deeply annoyed, but Aster knew that was just a mask for how his voice wanted to shake. It almost always was.

'I'm the elder,' Aster pointed out. 'Better me than ye.'

Jack laughed, and took a sip of his now cold tea.

  
  


Other Aster was right – it was hard.

Jack's gift was growing like a weed, all over the place, so the first thing Aster and Jack did was figure out what kind of things it covered now.

'Well, we can safely say water generation's been added to the list?' Jack said sheepishly as he followed Aster into the house, who was shivering violently, fur plastered flat by the fountain of water Jack had created.

'Y-ye m-m-might say that-t-t,' Aster grumbled through chattering teeth.

'I could try to dry you off with the Wind thing we figured out yesterday?'

'Y-ye've g-g-got the W-wind, y-yeah,' Aster said, managing to sound sharp despite the stuttering, 'b-but ye c-can't-t d-d-d-do  _ warm.' _

'I could do cold!'

'Th-that is the la-last thing I n-n-need.'

Ultimately, the list ended up comprising of seven new talents: water generation  _ and _ manipulation, wind generation ('it's weird,' Jack had complained at the last one, 'I'm not used to hearing any wind but  _ the _ Wind, you know?') and redirection ('I don't  _ make _ them do stuff, I just ask'). Then, on the more bizarre end of things, heat manipulation, though it was pretty limited on how warm he could make things and pretty near  _ unlimited _ on how cold, and then a pair of talents that confused the hell out of Aster.

'What on me good green earth,' he said to Jack once they felt they'd really measured the scope of his abilities, 'does making things glow blue and – whatever that annoying thing ye did to yer snowball was – have to do with  _ Winter?' _

'I don't think they're different things, Cottontail,' Jack said peaceably, scribbling on his piece of paper and readjusting the count of talents down to six. 'And I'm pretty sure it's more to do with the Joy thing.'

'Making someone laugh uncontrollably?'

'I thought it was pretty funny, and admit it,' Jack pointed his charcoal stick at Aster with a grin. 'You were happy there for a moment, weren't you?'

'I felt nauseous by the time it wore off,' Aster said flatly. 'Might want to dial it back there, Snowbird.'

'You're no fun.'

'Ye don't need some – Joy snowball to make me happy, Jack,' Aster said irritably.

Jack looked up at him, face gone soft and loving, and this was what Aster had missed, this easy and constant transition between bickering and adoring and back again.

'You're too much,' Jack said, and stood up, stretching. 'I think that's the most we're going to get out of this, though, unless something drastic changes.'

Aster was a bit distracted by the way Jack's sweater rode up, exposing the stark line of one hip bone before it disappeared beneath the dark, soft leather of his pants. From the way Jack smirked in the next second, that hadn't been accidental.

Their sex life had tapered off as the nightmares and secrecy had done their work, and in the last week, Aster had been too – afraid  _ (call it what it is, ye great chook) _ to try reaching out for Jack, for all that they had never stopped sharing the same bed.

Jack, though, had clearly had enough of  _ that. _

'What?' Jack said cheekily, the curve of his mouth promising. 'See something you like?'

Aster stood from his seat at the table, and loomed as best he could. Jack looked up at him, undaunted, but there was a shiver that ran through his hands, Aster had  _ seen _ it.

'Ye know damn well I do,' Aster said, voice hoarse, then Jack was upon him.

Aster couldn't tell whose limbs were where, whether he held Jack up or Jack flew and bore his own weight – what he knew was the hot press of Jack's mouth against his own, the sensation of weight, the dropping away of a great tension he hadn't known he'd carried.

When he was more aware of himself, of his own body, he found them stumbling towards their room, mouths as often engaged in laughing as they were in kisses and soft bites. There was such  _ joy _ around them, and in Aster's chest a curl of hope unfurled and fanned wide like the shading branches of a tree. They were alright. They would be alright.

Jack kicked the door of the room closed behind him, cutting off Robin's bewildered questions, and leapt into the air, tackling Aster back onto the bed. They landed with a bounce and an identical shout of laughter, one that melted into twin groans when Jack straddled him, hips already rolling instinctively to meet Aster's.

Aster undid the laces to Jack's pants while Jack nearly ripped his sweater, getting it off and tossing it somewhere to the side. Jack dropped his mouth to nip at Aster's bottom lip while he rose straight up, kicking off his pants and settling back down.

'I missed you,' he said into Aster's mouth, and Aster knew precisely what he meant.

Jack kissed down his throat, taking special care to nuzzle beneath Aster's chin with his brow as he went, and the scent mark was stronger than it had been in weeks, making Aster's hips stutter between Jack's thighs. Jack's fingers parted the fur around Aster's nipples, light pinches making Aster groan loudly.

He drifted down, towards Aster's cock where it lay pink and heavy on his stomach. Already, come pearled at the slit, Aster's body over-sensitive from the extended break, and Jack palmed it.

'What do you want, sweetheart?' Jack asked, soft voice cutting through Aster's moan, grip too loose to provide any friction when Aster tried to thrust up.

'I don't know,' Aster panted. 'I want ye, ye bloody tosser, don't tease me –'

His voice was ascending, rising higher, closer to a whine. Jack just watched him, mouth curved gently into a smile, then he nodded, coming to a decision.

'We haven't done this yet,' he said, shimmying down. 'You tell me if you don't like it, okay?'

Aster nodded, wordless, but he somehow doubted he'd not like something Jack chose to do to him.

Jack stroked the fur of his thighs, and began by licking away the thick drop of come at the tip of Aster's cock.

Aster didn't come from that, but it was a close thing, the way Jack closed his eyes at it, like he'd never thought he'd taste that again. Then he lapped his way down Aster's cock, wide, heated stripes until he reached the base. He flicked his tongue over the folds of Aster's sheath, and Aster made a strangled noise.

From there, his mouth went still further, lipping at Aster's balls until they hardened as well, little nips to Aster's thighs through the fur. Aster had spread his legs as far as they would go, hips jerking with every sharp point of sensation, and Jack took advantage of it, until Aster was a mess, breath coming in great gulps and gasps.

'Turn over,' Jack said with one last, loving bite, and Aster almost kneed him in the skull, he moved so quickly. Jack laughed, but it wasn't mocking, and the hand he smoothed over the back of Aster's right thigh was gentle.

Aster wondered if he'd fuck him like this, flat on the bed – Jack preferred them to be face to face, but the few times they'd done it like this, Aster had been on his knees. The press of the sheets to his cock was rough but not unpleasant, and Aster rolled into it for the little relief it gave him.

Then Jack's breath curled over Aster's hole, and he whined again as he realised what Jack intended to do.

The first swipe of Jack's tongue was hot, leaving Aster's muscles fluttering beneath a thick coat of saliva, and the sound – wet,  _ obscene _ – made Aster's hips jerk. Then Jack's hands clasped his hips, pinning them to the bed, and he began in earnest.

Aster's paws clutched at the sheets, thick nails tearing tiny holes that would need to be repaired later – but, oh, he wasn't thinking about that, or about anything at all. Jack's tongue was running the rim of Aster's hole, pressing  _ in _ the tiniest bit before plunging as far it could go, fucking him in the most peculiar way. Aster rocked back against Jack's grip, because he couldn't  _ not. _ He wanted. He wanted, he wanted, he  _ wanted _ \- 

Jack gave, tongue clever and unpredictable, and when Aster came at last, it was from nothing but the wet slide and the rough sensation of the sheets beneath him.

Jack turned him again, dragging him down and scrabbling for the little bottle of oil they kept nearby, slicking his fingers and sliding them into Aster's body.

It was too many too fast, and Aster didn't  _ care, _ fucking down on them and through the burn of the stretch. It was brilliant, sent shocks through every nerve he had, and they were only there a moment, anyway, before Jack removed them and began to slide himself in their place.

Like before, Aster couldn't bring himself to mind that it was too much too soon, and instead relished the sparking sensation. Jack had never been  _ rough, _ not truly, and it was a mindblowing experience, the way Jack bit savagely at his own lip, his hips working his cock deeper into Aster's body.

Aster spread his legs and welcomed him in, hooking his long ankles behind Jack's hips and pressing back, making Jack go faster. Jack choked, rocking in and in, and Aster met it, paws slipping on Jack's back, looking for a hold, his nails leaving red lines that had Jack groaning.

At last Jack was seated fully, and there was no time for Aster to enjoy it, because Jack was rolling in and out like his body knew no other motion, blue eyes screwed shut, fingers curled sharply into Aster's fur.

Aster came again, and felt unsatisfied by it, too much emotion and pent up, frustrated need to be sated; Jack shuddered, the feeling of Aster orgasming almost enough, and that was unsatisfying to Aster, too. He  _ wanted, _ wanted Jack to come, wanted to feel the splash and the brief uptick in speed as Jack fucked his way through the last of his orgasm –

The thought sent Aster over the edge again, and then Jack cried out, eyes snapping open, and  _ still, _ miraculously, Aster was hard. Jack didn't wait for his own afterglow to descend, only slid free, leaving Aster empty and aching.

That didn't last, because Jack dropped down, steadying Aster's cock with a hand before swallowing him down from tip to root, nose buried against the sheath. What ruined Aster, what made him cry out, what made him  _ scream, _ were the fingers Jack slid back inside him and rubbed against his prostate in the same moment.

In the aftermath (and it  _ was _ an aftermath, nothing that tumultuous and earthshaking could have anything less) they lay together, tangled and panting.

'I think one of the scratches might be bleeding,' Aster said, concerned as he looked at the marks he'd left on Jack's back over Jack's shoulder.

Jack snorted, like that didn't matter. 'If you can walk after that, I'll be shocked,' he returned, and kissed Aster's shoulder. 'Four, though. New record.' He lifted his head and grinned at Aster. 'Guess you like it rough, huh?'

'Not all the time,' Aster murmured, thinking it over. 'But I needed that.'

'So did I,' Jack agreed. 'You liked – the thing?'

'Like ye wouldn't believe,' Aster said truthfully.

'Awesome,' Jack said, nuzzling in under Aster's chin. 'Do you think any of the scratches will scar?'

'I bloody hope not,' Aster said, but the one he'd been eyeing was indeed oozing blood, and he winced. 'Might be that one of them does, though. I'm sorry, Snowbird.'

'Don't be,' Jack said, sounding very satisfied. 'That's perfect. I love it.' He tugged Aster down and kissed his mouth. 'I love you.'

'See, what'd I tell ye,' Aster said, kissing him back. 'Ye don't need the Joy talent to make me happy.'

Jack rolled his eyes, but let it be.

  
  


The month passed more slowly than Aster had thought it might, and at the same time, went much more quickly than he'd ever imagined.

Jack's gift was intrinsically tied to his emotions, apparently, so it was an excellent thing that he was naturally so happy, or the weather patterns might have suffered a bit. The storm that had descended had truly not been Jack's work, but it had reacted with his fear and frustration, and the wild oscillation between Jack's unconscious encouragement and his attempts at calming it had whipped it into an uncertain frenzy. Nevertheless, no one had been hurt by it, save for a brief bout of frostbite on Aster's arm that was forgotten by the next morning, and they'd been fine.

Now that they were talking and trying to be clearer, it was like – coming home, like everything was back in its proper place.

They still had nightmares – true ones, and now the number was split rather evenly between the two of them as to which woke the other with soft cries in the dark. Jack still dreamt that he would hurt others with the ice growing out of control, and now Aster had his own share of nightmares, his own visions of blood and grief and great, blinding white light.

They muddled through.

And so, shortly after February came on, Tooth returned to them.

The month had passed with little contact but the occasional breeze from Emma, as the snows were too high for any but a true flier to brave, and the winds were cold enough that Emma didn't feel like asking them to carry her. Jack and Aster, for their part, had been content with their isolation, as at the core of it, they weren't terribly social creatures. Aster preferred to be alone or with little company as a rule, and Jack had always had a longing for the wilds, rather than the careful and polite conversation of the town.

Aster had occupied his time with occasional ventures out to repair the trees that had been damaged by the storm, and with Jack, helping him try to focus and control his gift. When he had the spare time to think about what it would be like when Tooth came back, he'd thought it might be awkward, awful and stilted.

Instead, it was – relieved.

She arrived in the evening, just after the sun had fallen; later and later every day, now, and so the sky was still a purple-red colour when she landed neatly on their doorstep and knocked.

How she'd missed them outside, Aster wasn't sure, but he swallowed back his sudden nervousness and called, 'Over here!'

She turned, startled, and Aster waved. He and Jack stood near the Oak, practising again with the water generation and manipulation – at the moment, Jack was finding it hard to go from one to the other without just freezing the whole mess.

She flew over slowly, gingerly, clearly afraid of her welcome. That passed quickly when she saw what Jack was doing, and she zoomed the rest of the way.

'Jackson Frost, what on  _ earth _ are you doing?!' she demanded, coming to a stop in front of them.

'Uh, trying to move this water, duh,' Jack said, and grinned up at her. 'Not as easy as it looks, Tooth.'

'How are you doing that?' she demanded, and Jack shrugged.

'Lucky me, turns out I get all these new powers and junk,' he said blandly. 'Trying to figure them out has been a peach, let me tell you.'

'Is this what you meant last time –' Tooth began, then flinched.

Aster ignored that. 'Yeah, this'd be part of it,' he said, and looked Tooth square in the eye. 'And ye're forgiven.'

Tooth flinched again. 'Just like that?' she whispered after a moment.

Aster nodded. 'Just like that. Reckon ye saved me life, and ye didn't know what ye were doing. Can't hold that against ye, if it's anything like what Snowbird's been going through.'

'And I'm not really mad either,' Jack pitched in. 'Since you saved my husband's life and all, so that I could actually meet him and, you know, marry him. So there's that.'

She looked back and forth between them, visibly confused, and Aster couldn't help the chuckle that bubbled out.

'Ye're fine, Tooth,' he said firmly. 'Ye gave it back. Ye've made it up.'

'Not yet, I haven't,' Tooth said, a determined look entering her eye. 'And when you two want to explain the whole new mess, you let me know, but tonight –' she shook her head. 'It's time I told you where I came from, I think.'

Jack snapped into solemnity so fast it made Aster's head spin. 'Are you sure?' he asked, looking at Tooth intently. 'You shouldn't just tell us because you feel like – like you owe Aster, or something.'

'No, no,' Tooth said, shaking her head. 'I told you last time, I'm not exactly a good person. If I didn't want to tell you, I wouldn't.'

'Reckon that's not true, either,' Aster murmured mildly. 'Bad people don't do the kind of things ye've done for this town, Tooth.'

Her eyes closed, as if pained. 'Save your judgement, Bunny,' she said, sounding immensely old for a moment, before her eyes opened again. 'Come, now, it's almost dark. You two shouldn't be outside this late.'

'It's not even six!' Jack protested, but Aster led the way inside, and made the now-traditional pot of tea, and settled the three of them into the living room. The difference between last time's misery and this time's anticipation was like night and day.

Tooth took a deep breath, then began, 'I was born Toothiana – no last name, we'd never needed one – to Haroom and Rashmi...'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and you can hear the rumble of the oncoming emotional thunder...


	13. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> got your tissues ready?

'I was born Toothiana – no last name, we'd never needed one – to Haroom and Rashmi, of the mountain village of Punjam Hy Loo, in the Northern Ranges of India.   


'Punjam Hy Loo – I... You'll have to forgive me, dears. I'm not sure I can do it justice. I've been all over Asia, I've crossed most of Normerica on the wing, and I've never seen anything quite like it. In the Before, Punjam Hy Loo hadn't been a village at all, but a temple, an ancient and sacred one. Carved into the mountain, the exterior walls shaped like gods and demons in a great battle, it depicted a myth that predated Hinduism – a battle between those who were good and those who were not, all for the fate of the last flying elephant.   


'An elephant? I've never seen one in person, of course. Long dead by my time. The carving was massive, though – I would fly up as a child and sit in the curl of its long trunk. I'm sure Sandy's got books with pictures – big and grey, massive ears?   


'Sorry, Bunny, that  _ was _ sort of a joke waiting to happen.   


'Later, as mythology and predominant religion changed, the temple was devoted to Ganesha, the elephant-headed son of Siva; some things were too firmly entrenched in local culture to ever change, though, so the all-female order remained as the sole attendants of the temple. So it was that the Sisters of Flight, so named for the flying elephant they'd originally tended, were still the residents of Punjam Hy Loo when the End came.   


'When I was born, it had been a village for decades. Immediately after the End, the Sisters of Flight opened their very sturdy, defensible doors to the nearby mixed-faith village, believing (quite rightly!) that the only way for them all to survive was to band together. My mother was two years old when her parents fled to the temple, and was shortly thereafter orphaned by the radiation sickness. The Monsoon was coming in from the sea, blowing the poison straight to them – to this day, I'm convinced the only reason any of them survived was their deeply inland location. The coastal regions were utterly devastated.   


'The Sisters of Flight took her – indeed, all of the orphaned girls – under their metaphorical winds. The boys were placed with the surviving villagers. Then, the Change came.   


'My mother changed first – overnight, as a matter of fact, and I can only imagine the stunned looks on the Sister's faces when they went to rouse her and found her covered in feathers! She was the first to change, but not the last; every single child taken in by the Sisters grew wings, and every female born thereafter was the same story.   


'No, we didn't all look alike. Some bore swan's wings, songbirds, raptors; my mother's was unmistakably a peacock's plumage. There were insects as well – butterflies, dragonflies, even a rhinoceros beetle's.   


'The Hindu population of the village hailed it as the blessing of Ganesha, his gesture to the Sisters of Flight that he still watched over them, in this new world after the End. He had made their newest charges Sisters of Flight in truth, when the Sisters had been unsure that their order could survive the End at all. The Muslims whispered that it was a miracle handed down by Allah, that he had not forgotten them and gifted them with His angels to protect them. The two groups could agree that it was miraculous, at least, so there was no real arguing about where the good fortune had come from.   


'When my mother turned thirty, very little had changed in the twenty-eight years since the End. The unnamed village folded into Punjam Hy Loo had never been prosperous by the standards of the Before, so life hadn't gotten that much harder. The radiation sickness passed with great casualty, of course, but was otherwise no different from any other number of diseases that plagued them. Even the Great Northern Exodus didn't affect us that deeply – ah, sorry.   


'Right after the End, there was a massive movement of people inland and to the north, fleeing the coastal regions. Only two ever reached Punjam Hy Loo, and neither of them ever willingly spoke of the journey in any detail. There was a horrendous loss of life, in numbers unimaginable. Something similar must have happened in Normerica, in Africa, in Zhōngguó... I can't imagine the scope of it.   


'Despite this, life in Punjam Hy Loo was almost idyllic. They raised the few livestock that hadn't died in the initial sicknesses, farmed; the Sisters of Flight tended the temple and schooled the children of their new village. Some thought life was much better than it had been in the Before, to be frank!   


'My mother, bless her soul, was bored to tears. Each day the same as the one just past, nothing and no one new.   


'That summer, at last something new arrived in my mother's world – two men, travelling from the recovering south. The first man introduced them as scouts for a new trade route, a planned venture that would snake north into the mountains beyond even us. It was very exciting on its own – but my mother was much more interested in the man who stood docilely behind the first.   


'The Sisters, my mother most especially, were no fools. They could tell, even if the villagers could not, that something wasn't right about the first man's story. As the days passed, more and more they grew to distrust the newcomers; and looking at the first man, it wasn't hard to see why.   


'He'd been some sort of nobility before the End as a child, even after the old revolution (that, I know very little about, so I'm afraid I can't tell you more.) His family had consolidated their wealth and remained powerful even after the End, and he wore that arrogance like the finest silk cloak. He was cruel and vain and selfish – it was written all over his face, and in the Change that had covered him in dark fur and forced him to walk on his knuckles. He was like a great monkey, and fascinating to look at, in the same way any destruction or disaster is fascinating to look at.   


'The second man – the first's slave, they learned quickly – was everything his master was not. Kind, humble, fiercely clever; he wanted for nothing. Not in the sense that he had everything he wanted, but rather that there was nothing for him to want. He was fascinating in the way a sunrise is, and my mother was drawn to him from the first. As a Sister of Flight, she was forbidden marriage so long as she was bound by her vows, and the Sisters refused to release her, no matter how she begged to be allowed to pursue him. The outsiders could not be trusted, they warned her. It was for her own good.   


'Then the day came when the master tried to kill a Sister of Flight.   


'The Sisters had been right to distrust them – the master had been lying all along. There was no trade route, no scouting done; the master was a hunter, and a murderer besides. In the Before, his father had sought to have one of every animal's head mounted on his wall, and after the End, that desire had grown twisted. Now, he wanted every strange and wondrous mutt stuffed and preserved in his halls, and his son was his instrument of collections.   


'I know this only because of my father – as the years passed and he grew used to freedom, he too grew to be bitter toward his old master, and there came a time when it pained him to speak of the man at all. When this was all happening, though, they were great friends; my father was born shortly after the End, and had never known any other way of life. He lived to serve his master, and thought that was friendship.   


'He and his master had come to Punjam Hy Loo, having heard rumours of the many winged women there, and the master intended to bring the most wondrous pair of wings to his father. It was my mother's luck that hers were the most colourful and beautiful. It stood to reason that it was her the master intended to slay.   


'But the time they had spent in Punjam Hy Loo, pretending to be scouts, had shown my father other ways to live – there was freedom, and peace, not just servitude and bloodshed. He'd never liked the killing his master so relished, and had always looked aside when the moment came, unable to bear the sight of murder, the loss of another human life.   


'That day, when his master took aim at my mother, he made his decision, and did not turn away.   


'My father leapt in front of his master's shot, taking a poison arrow to his shoulder, and that act saved both my mother's life and his in the same moment. The Sisters of Flight knew which of the men meant them harm, now, and they leapt at my father's master, intent on ripping him to shreds.   


'At the time, my father still had love in his heart for his friend, and he begged the Sisters to banish the man instead, to spare his life. Humbled by his compassion, one of the Sisters who had the peculiar gift of making a person believe one thing is true, no matter the evidence to the contrary, forced the master to believe he'd slain my father. Then, the Sisters banished him from Punjam Hy Loo, never to return on pain of death.   


'The master left, weeping over the loss of the only friend he'd ever had; though my father had been his slave, neither had any friend but for the other. My father, overcome at last by the poison, fell into a deep, feverish sleep.   


'Nothing they tried healed him, and so my mother, gifted with telepathy in addition to her wings, entered my father's mind and asked if he knew the cure.   


'He did, he assured her, but it was now unobtainable. The poison had been crafted by a mutt in his master's employ, and acted on sorrow. It could only be healed by the tears of someone who loved the victim. It was alright, he tried to comfort her. The only person who loved him was the banished master, and he did not mind dying for someone else. He'd done the right thing at last. She was safe. That was not such a terrible thing to die for, in the end.   


'My mother knew in that moment that she loved this kind-hearted man, who even in his last moments tried to save another person, and she drew away; she could not bear to feel his death coming on. She wept over his body, for a good man lost.   


'Where the tears touched his skin, a soft purple light arose, growing bright then fading. Soon, he was awake, and quite bewildered by it – he'd expected, when the arrow struck him, to die as a result. He opened his eyes, and saw my mother's tear-stained face, and realised that there had been another path all along.   


_ 'Jack! _ How rude – of course that actually happened. As if you have a leg to stand on when it comes to fairy tale love stories. Your love brought  _ you _ back from certain death, and saved  _ you, _ Bunny, from eternity as a giant tree! Are you quite done, now?   


'Good. My mother and father were married the next spring, the Sisters of Flight having released her from her vows, and they lived quite happily together. They tried to have a child for a number of years, but had all but given up by the time my mother became pregnant with me. They never could have another child; I still don't know why. An illness, or condition? I don't know. Either way, I was born six years to the day after they were married, and they were quite happy with me, I must say.   


'I grew up a favourite child of the village – my parents were my parents, of course, but my family was much larger than our tiny hut could hold. It was the happiest time of my life, save for when I settled here with my girls, and it was still happier than that, because I was a child and knew nothing of the world outside.   


'As I mentioned, Punjam Hy Loo was very isolated from the rest of the world, and as a child, I had no idea there were places where people suffered. How could I? I'd never gone hungry, slept in the cold; that is a good thing, I know, but it certainly gave me a skewed sense of how the world worked. Like my mother before me, I took the vows of the Sisters of Flight, and served the temple. We remained a mixed faith village, with the Muslim families celebrating their holidays, the Hindu families theirs. It was peaceful. We had no idea of the turmoil outside.   


'It does seem strange, doesn't it? Here we were, trying to make lives after the End, and such an inconsequential thing to us as religion was still so big an issue. Not in Punjam Hy Loo, but throughout India. From far beyond the Northern Range all the way down into the Southern Horn, there was tension between the Muslims and the Hindus. Not to mention internal strife; as I recall, there were two or three kinds of Islam, as a general rule, and there were many, many different sects of Hinduism. But, for the most part, the two groups set aside their internal differences and banded together against the others. A remarkable event in its own right, of course, but a terrible sign of what was to come.   


'While I was growing up carefree and loved, the world outside was crumbling like cliffs into the sea.   


'It started, as all things do, with small events. Muslims eating cattle, caste discrimination... Muslims were excluded from Hindu villages, no matter how dire their need, and vice versa. Slowly, it became more – desecration of surviving temples and mosques alike, beatings. The already shaky relationship with the young country to our west, Pakistan, had been shattered by the End. Now, the two religions were polarising. People were clinging to old rivalries for structure, and though it was unorganised, it was violent. In Punjam Hy Loo, we celebrated births and weddings; in the larger world, people only gathered for funerals.   


'That said, it wasn't a war, per se – not yet. Just violent tension. Neither side had a central focus outside their fear and hatred, no leader to whip them into true conflict. Not at the time.   


'...I'm sorry, I need – I need a moment.   


'Thank you, Jack. But I'm alright – I need to say this. It's been sitting in me a very long time, my dear, and –   


'Yes, exactly. Talking about things before you're ready... but I am. It needs to be said.   


'I was twenty two by a week. I remember it was precisely a week – that year, my birthday had fallen on a plant-gathering day, and that happened once a week.   


'I loved being a Sister of Flight, so much more than my mother ever had. Not that she hadn't loved the temple, loved her village, but it was a set of restrictions, and my mother is far more independent than I've ever been. I do well within set lines; there is little so set as a temple's schedule. In the mornings, before the sun rose, we'd say our prayers, then sweep out the floors. We'd teach the youth of the village from the Vedas how to read, and from some other books from the Before.   


'My father usually assisted with some of these, even though he certainly wasn't a Sister – but no one in the village knew more about medicine than he, and the Sisters had always regarded him highly, ever since he'd saved my mother's life. His master had thought it would be helpful to have a skilled slave, and had encouraged his twin passions of tracking and healing for his own selfish gain. What he could teach of his own gift - empathy, feeling for others - he did, and passed on his other knowledge, as well.

‘We were out of the village, the handful of Sisters and I who had gone on our weekly expedition, by about a mile, I think. I wasn’t the first to see the smoke; we kept a lookout, as ever. The experience with my father’s master, all those years ago, had coloured many of our interactions since; though the raiders were few and far between (and easily repelled by Punjam Hy Loo’s strong walls), we kept watch. So it was that one of my Sisters, Priyah, looked back towards home and called the alarm.

‘We didn’t know what had happened, but we raced home; I can’t tell you all the thoughts that ran through my head, there were so many. Had raiders finally scaled our walls? Had something gone wrong in the temple kitchens, and gotten out of control? Had someone’s gift gone awry? I didn’t know, and that terrified me. There had never been such a disruption in my life before.

‘As we closed the distance, I began to hear screams and shouts. Metal clanging together; all of the Sisters, everyone in the village, had weapons. I remember thinking of the little family that lived beside my childhood home, the way they’d hung a sword on the wall, the way old Abdul had told me, eyes sparkling,  _ we live in such a beautiful place, that sword will never see battle, inshallah.  _ I remember wishing he’d been right.

‘They weren’t raiders, of course. Raiders don’t burn perfectly good supplies; raiders don’t kill women and children, not at that time. Slave trade was still very popular, though it had declined a great deal by the time I’d left for Normerica.

‘There were pockets of fighting as we flew over the temple, and the village was doing well. I didn’t pause to count bodies, but I learned later that we’d lost far fewer than I thought we had at the time.

‘By unspoken agreement, we all split off into groups of three, seeking out the community leaders. There was the Head Sister, who had gone by the name ‘Head Sister’ for so long that I can’t recall her true name at all. There was Fatima Al-Amin, who guided the Muslim families. And there was my mother and father.

‘I shouldn’t have gone looking for them. I shouldn’t have left my Sisters behind. I should never have seen that - found that - on my own…’

‘...Thank you, Bunny. No, I wish to keep going.

‘My father was long dead by the time I arrived. My mother still fought on, trying to keep the enemy from taking his body. And the man she fought - I’d only ever seen his face in my nightmares. Teeth as sharp as scimitars, eyes black like caves, fur matted and bloodied. It was my father’s master.

‘As these things always go, I didn’t get there in time. He stole the sword from my mother’s hands, breaking her wrist as he did, and gutted her with it.

‘I don’t remember what happened after that. He had escaped, certainly, though I was told hours later it wasn’t without half his face missing. I’d ripped my mother’s sword from his hands and sliced his face open, according to my Sisters who finally caught up with me. I was unhurt, physically, but…

‘I had inherited my father’s gift of empathy, but my mother’s touch. I had no control for that first week, in the aftermath of the attack. I couldn’t touch anyone without overwhelming them, without my thoughts and my grief and my  _ rage _ overcoming them. I couldn’t even attend my parents’ burial; I hid in the highest reaches of the temple, and spoke to no one. I was convinced I would die of my grief.

‘I clearly didn’t. After a week or so, I regained my control. I’d spent that week as a shell of myself, but all I could think as I reentered the world was that my mother and father would have hated that. Not me - I don’t think they would be proud of me now, but I’ve never doubted they loved me. But they would have hated that I’d withdrawn. My father had always done everything he could for this village that had adopted him. My mother had always taught me, as she’d learned from him, that you must keep going, even with a broken heart. Only time heals wounds like that, and I knew they would be so angry if I died now, with so much to do.

‘It was a very jumbled time for me, mentally, so I’m afraid I’m not being as clear as I’d like. Even now, some thirty years later… it’s hard to process.

‘Thank you.

‘I learned what had happened very slowly. Within the year, though, I knew the story as fully as anyone could; that my father’s former master had somehow become something of a leader amongst the violent factions of Islam. How, was anyone’s guess, of course, as he had been Hindu, same as my father. The attack had come as the result of the circumstances of his banishment - as far as we could tell, he’d attacked Punjam Hy Loo because it had been the place of death for his dearest friend. The irony that he’d brought about the death he’d so hated was not lost on me, and I grew bitter, lonely. I didn’t want to talk to people, I didn’t want to spend time in their company; at the same time, I longed for their words, to be loved the way I remembered it had been with my mother and father, to have a  _ family _ again.

‘Years passed like this, and now that we knew what was going on in the larger world, it was alarming. Before my parents’ - deaths - like I’ve said, there were no leaders before then, for either side. Now, though, the Monkey King - that was what he’d taken to calling himself, the pompous prick - oh, my goodness, pardon me.

‘Jack. Jack, stop  _ laughing,  _ it’s not that funny. Hmph.

‘Oh, you -!

‘Yes, that helped. Thank you. But if you’re done interrupting, I would like to get through this all at once. It will be a lot, I know. But believe you me, it’s best we get this over with in one go.

‘Now, the Monkey King had whipped the Muslim faction into order. I’ve never pretended to understand the level of doublethink that brought  _ that _ about. So far as I can tell, people wanted to fight, to be a part of something, and he preyed on that. Some people will always follow someone else, and where there’s a mob, it will grow.

‘Many of them were good people, just scared. I knew that, because I knew the Muslims in Punjam Hy Loo, and they were scared. It got worse, as time went on; it started with one or two refugees, but it grew, and soon we were considered one of the safest places for Hindus to flee. There were some scuffles, initially, when they came and found Muslims living there as well. I handled those.

‘Well, the other Sisters, they all had their families. Families they’d come from, I mean; we all kept to our vows, though we did lose one or two to released vows, when they fell in love. My mother had set something of a precedent.

‘Me, though, I had no one. No one except this village that had loved me as a child, and sheltered me as an orphan. I made it very, very clear that the Muslims who lived in Punjam Hy Loo were not just to be tolerated, but treated the same as anyone else, or the offender would answer to me.

‘Somehow, the story got out that I was the one who’d scarred the Monkey King, and people began to ask my advice on things. Things like defence perimeters, guard rotations, supply allotment and housing the refugees; I didn’t realise it at the time, as I began to take a more involved role in this all, under the guidance of the Head Sister, that I was being groomed as her replacement. I was good at it, a good general, in a sense.

‘We never went on the offence, never went out to rescue other villages. I remember there was a lot of anger about that from the refugees; we were urged, constantly, to take the fight to the Monkey King’s armies, to end this instead of always playing catch up. The reason the Head Sister chose me, I think, is that I never listened to them. I would have loved nothing more, some days, than to go out and kill the Monkey King myself. He deserved no better, as far as I was concerned. But my father’s voice was always in my ear, and his teachings in my hands, and I couldn’t betray that, not while people depended on me.

‘For years, over a decade, we did this. And all the while, I was alone, surrounded by hundreds, and then thousands, of people.

‘It ate at me from the inside. Some people can be alone, can handle that; I can’t. I need people around me, people invested in  _ me, _ not in my job or my duties. My Sisters didn’t fill that hole. The Head Sister, for all that we grew closer and closer, like a grandmother and her favourite granddaughter, didn’t fill it either.

‘Occasionally, my gifts would malfunction, going stronger than they should in spurts, and sometimes they would run dry. It felt like they kept trying to run outside of my body, into something that didn’t exist yet. That’s the only way I can describe what it felt like - like it was… looking for something.

‘Obviously, there was no research, no information on this kind of thing. I’d never heard of anything like this. And gifts had only been around since after the End - even the carefully tended books from the Before were unable to help me.

‘In what little free time I had, I studied the Vedas. They’d given us so much guidance for so long, I thought there must be the answer to my problem somewhere in there.

‘At last, fourteen years after the death of my parents, I found it.

‘Please, I must ask you not to interrupt, alright? I’ll tell you when I’m finished, but this part leads directly into the next one, and you might have to hold onto your questions for a little while.

‘I’ve never told  _ anyone _ this. It’s so dangerous. If the wrong people knew of this, if someone took advantage of it… it’s such a beautiful thing. I’ve kept it secret for years and years, and thought I would go to my grave having never said a word about it.

‘I know I don’t, dear. I  _ want _ to. If I can trust anyone with this, to not use it wrong, it’s you two. And, well - it’s good to tell someone. And you two deserve it, for certain. I want to give you this gift, and it  _ is _ a gift, I promise you.

‘Now, of course the Vedas didn’t give me the literal answer. That’s asking rather a lot of things written thousands of years ago. But it gave me the idea. It was a mad idea, of course, but it was clever, too, and I was half mad with loneliness, anyway. It seemed to be a perfect solution.

‘I would make for myself a child.

‘I know. You’re confused - I can see it on your faces. Thank you for holding off, my dears, it means a lot.

‘I’ve never said this either, but it’s a small thing in comparison - I have never, and will never, want a partner of my own. In most any sense, to be honest, save as perhaps a close friend. The business of romance is lovely, for certain, but it’s not for me. Neither, frankly, is anything else.

‘That said, I wanted a family. I wanted children of my own, someone to love the way my parents had loved me. I didn’t realise this until I’d meditated on the Vedas; for a long time, the nature of the emptiness in me had gone nameless. But here, at last, was a solution.

‘I still can’t explain why I didn’t immediately scoff at the idea, dismiss it as the product of an exhausted mind. It felt like - it felt like the hand of Shakti herself, the divine mother and daughter and everything in between, descended and for a moment rested on my brow. This was right, I knew, and there was a manic energy that overtook me. I could do this. The Devi had given me this gift, and I would not waste it.

‘When I touch you and feel your emotions, it’s like a song in my ears. And, I have to say, I am not a remarkable singer by any stretch of the imagination, but when I sang that night, in the highest reaches of the temple where no one else ventured, I swear, the great statues carved into the mountain wept.

‘The song ended - all songs do - and I had an egg. I don’t know if that’s because I’m a bird animutt, or just the nature of the magic I sang. But I had an egg, just the right size to curl up around, and I knew that inside was my child. I would protect it with everything I had.

‘A few months later - fewer than if I was pregnant, but only by about two months, since the Southwest Monsoon was just ending - it hatched, and I named my daughter Indira. I’d kept the egg secret from everyone, terrified that they would take it from me. And they would have! Hatching a human child from an egg - like something out of one of the children’s tales. She looked just like me, same plumage, but her colours were the bright yellow and soft orange of a sunrise. She opened her eyes, and the world was right, again.

‘I had my daughter, and no one would take her from me. I’d kept her egg warm, I’d cared for her, and if anyone thought they could touch her, I would have torn their throat out with my teeth. I suppose it must have been strange, to the people of Punjam Hy Loo - one of their community leaders, suddenly a mother, with no husband in sight. But if they thought so, no one brought it up to me. For one, I have it on good authority that I was a very fierce woman - oh, that’s kind of you to say, Bunny, I’m glad to hear you think so. But, shh, no more interruptions! For two, everyone was quite busy handling the problems outside our walls. I must assume no one had the gumption or energy to ask.

‘Mandira came next, because I wanted my daughter to have siblings. She was the loveliest shades of blue, and Indira loved her baby sister to pieces. She wasn’t more than a baby herself, of course, but she was so happy. Then the triplets - the song went on longer than I’d expected, and getting three eggs was a surprise, for certain! But, oh my little darlings, my sweet girls. They were so beautiful - Lakshmi hatched first, and she waited so patiently for Parvati. Yellow and pink, and then Kali, with her deep purple. I still don’t understand why they came out different colours - by all rights, they should have looked just like me, since I was their only parent. But they are so beautifully, perfectly themselves. I think, had I just been a little more like - well, like the Tooth I met in the dreams - I think they would have been. But I was so desperate for other people, for children of mine, for human beings, that they were born precisely the way they should be.

‘Arti, with her bright red feathers - oh, she’s going to be a stunner when she gets older, my goodness - was intended to be my final child. Six, I thought, was more than enough. They would never lack for company, for support, if something happened to me. And, oh, my dears. As the years passed, I grew more afraid.

‘My strategy of keeping us safe was only viable if my opponent could be satisfied. Having killed the woman he blamed for his friend’s death, the Monkey King might have had his hatred sated, if I hadn’t so scarred him. He was a vain, selfish man, and to be attacked for avenging his own wrong was intolerable. It had never been about the Muslims versus the Hindu, not really, not for him. He took advantage of the animosity to attain his own goals - my mother’s death, and now mine.

‘Indira had just turned five. Arti was a few months old. And we received word of a massive force of mutts, marching towards us.

‘It was flee or stand our ground. Those were the only options, and the city - for there were enough of us now to call it such - was evenly divided. And I? I knew my place - between the Monkey King and the home my mother and father had loved so much. The night I learned of it, I sang one last egg into being - my little Padma.

‘I didn’t understand the urge, myself. Why bring another child into the world, with news like that? But there was a warbling in my voice all that day, until I sang that night. She wanted to be real, I suppose. Some children are determined to exist, so far as I can tell, and my darling Padma, my little Baby Tooth… I kept her egg safe as more and more refugees flooded into Punjam Hy Loo, as we made our plans.

‘We - the Head Sister and I, and a number of other community leaders who had come and retained some influence - decided on a two-pronged response. Those who wished to could flee, to the north, through a high mountain pass. Those who wished to remain would do so, and we would stand at last against the Monkey King.

‘I was both torn and not. On the one hand, I had my daughters - I could never put my girls into that danger, not willingly. On the other, I had my home, and my duty. People depending on me.

‘I made my decision. I would send my girls (and my precious egg) with the refugees, until I could join them. They would go with the Head Sister, who would keep them safe. And I would remain until the last - until either the Monkey King or I lay dead in the dirt.

‘It killed me. I spent every spare second with them, and I made a case for Padma’s egg - it was so thickly cushioned, I almost couldn’t fit her egg inside! But it would keep her warm, and this final daughter of mine would be safe until I could find her again. And I would. Of this, I was sure.

‘The months passed, and at last the day came for the refugees to flee. We smuggled them out in the thick of night, and I kissed each of my daughters goodbye - the only good parts of me, the only parts that were worth saving. I would find them, I promised. Indira held Arti, the triplets all holding each other’s hands and clinging to Mandira. Parvati was crying, but Kali and Lakshmi were wiping her tears away before they could fall. To the Head Sister, I entrusted the case with Padma’s egg inside. I prayed they would be safe, and watched them go until the darkness swallowed them.

‘In the city, a little more than half of us remained. I believe it was close to four thousand mutts, and we were prepared. Punjam Hy Loo was no longer the innocent village the Monkey King had ransacked almost two decades past. We were as ready for the end as we could be.

‘I didn’t know at the time, as it was a decision intentionally made without my knowledge, but some of the more - extreme - leaders amongst us were bent towards something more… violent. What’s more violent than a battle, of course? But they were some of those who believed truly that the Muslims were the problem, and cared nothing for who led them. And for them, wiping out as many of the enemy mutts as possible was all they wanted.

‘Morning came. We could see the enemy advancing on our mountain. And, my dears, I realised we could not win.

‘Four thousand mutts cannot stand against the numbers the Monkey King had drawn. I still don’t know the count, nor where they all came from. Tens of thousands. It was going to be a bloodbath.

‘And then…

‘Sorry, my dears. This is almost as hard as… as my parents.

‘We felt it before we heard it. I remember all of my blood running cold - I’d never thought that truly happened. I flew up, as high as I could, and I could see the trees shaking below, and to a feeling of complete loss, a great plume of dust and smoke from the north.

‘They’d bombed the pass, with all of the refugees. No one made it out.

‘Strangely enough, I remember the next part very clearly. I descended, and announced what I’d seen. There was screaming, there was weeping, there was anger. Someone asked me what we were going to do; I took a moment to respond. It was like I - stopped. Everything that made me Toothiana had ceased. My daughters - the Head Sister - my  _ egg _ \- everything was gone.

‘‘We burn them,’ I said, and unsheathed my mother’s sword. ‘We burn them all.’

‘A great cheer went up at that, but none of it was joyful. We’d all had someone fleeing, all had family we’d hoped to reunite with; this was the war cry of people already dead.

‘I cared for nothing then, but to see the Monkey King dead.

‘It was manipulative of them, but the leaders who had made their plans approached me then. Told me what they had created. And I - god help me - I agreed.

‘We set up the explosives. Fire jars, but so much larger, so much worse. Casks and casks of flammables and explosives. I never knew where they’d gotten it all, but they must have been planning something like that since we first heard of the Monkey King’s march towards us. It was set in a keystone configuration - maybe a better word is domino, like the little blocks Nick has in his collection. When you set them up and push over the first one, they all fall in sequence.

‘We would burn with them, but few of us cared. Those who did fled, and were killed by the oncoming army.

‘So few of the original Punjam Hy Loo villagers remained, so those of us who were fliers and could flee fastest were assigned to set up the cascading line of fuses. We would open the gates, draw in the enemy, and then blow the whole mountain down.

‘A pyrrhic victory, I heard it called later, in hushed whispers by people who weren’t there. Some word from the Before. I didn’t have a name for it at the time; all I knew was that my daughters - my  _ girls  _ \- were gone. Dead. Because of one man’s grudge, one man’s pride. I would burn him to the ground, past ashes into nothing. He would be gone, and then - I didn’t expect I’d survive the explosion. None of us who stayed did.

‘I volunteered to light the first fuse, above the gate.

‘The plan began like a dream. We opened the doors and pretended to flee at the first barrage of the enemy. They poured in, and were drawn further and further in by the ‘runners’, and cut down in the streets. They crammed themselves in, bloodthirsty. War makes men mindless. Or maybe it doesn’t. I can’t pretend to understand it - it’s madness. And I was as mad as the rest of them.

‘I waited for my signal, hidden above the gate, ready to light the fuse that would end us all. And then  _ he  _ came.

‘He shrieked like the monkey he so resembled - and I’ve never fought so hard in my life. Every sword slash, parried; every dodge, matched; every step in sync. Hatred is a powerful emotion, and we hated each other with everything we had. He hated me for having had anything to do with the woman who’d killed his only friend - I still don’t know if he knew I was his friend’s daughter. I hated him for having taken not only my mother and father, but now my  _ children,  _ my daughters, my world from me. Who knows which of the griefs was greater? I don’t want to know. I feel like it’s not something meant for mortal people to know.

‘I felt the hand of Shakti upon me again, and her rage, the destructive aspect of her, was in my blood. I’ve never moved so fast, so completely. I was the goddess Kali, dancing in the air and down on to the earth, the end of all things, the end of an age. And when the flare went up at the top of the mountain, I set off the fuse.

‘The world ended. It was the loudest thing I’ve ever heard. The earth shook, and the walls crumbled. Buildings fell. Everything, explosion after explosion, was gone. The Monkey King collapsed to his knees, and I had a hard time staying in the air.

‘This was the moment. This was the time when I would finally kill the man who had destroyed everything I loved.

‘Then - oh, my dears - a tiny hand touched my shoulder, and in my head I heard the most beautiful sound.

‘ _ Maan? _

‘It was Indira, when I turned around. For a moment, I thought I must have died - but I can’t imagine my girls ever looking so soot stained, so small against the backdrop of all that fire.

‘When I’d sent them away, they’d snuck back in, and hid in the highest reaches of the temple. They hadn’t wanted to leave me. Then, when the explosions had first gone off, they’d fled into the sky, Indira carrying Arti and Mandira leading Lakshmi, Parvati, and Kali. And now, they hovered here, watching me with big, frightened eyes; and in Mandira’s hands, oversized and awkward, scorched but intact, was the box holding Padma’s egg.

‘My girls were alive. My daughters. My  _ world.  _ What was the Monkey King worth, to that?

‘I flew down, and he cowered away from me. He was afraid, he was a small man, a petty man. I did not need to live a life defined by him anymore.

‘I took his sword from him. ‘Burn, or bleed, or live,’ I told him. ‘I do not care. This is my mercy.’

‘I flew back up, gathered my girls up to me; I took Arti from Indira’s arms, and strapped Padma’s egg to my chest. We left Punjam Hy Loo behind us, and I’ve never heard of any other survivors. If they are there, they are like me; we keep our silences.

‘A hundred miles away, I heard the cracking sound of the egg. We landed, my girls sleepy and tired but so brave, and asleep in moments. They had no idea what was in the box; they still don’t know where they came from. While they were sleeping, I helped Padma out of her egg.

‘She was early by about a month, and so small, but even in the light of the dawn, I could see that she and I could have been twins. I named her Padma, and though her thoughts were only a few minutes old, she loved me.

‘I didn’t cry. Punjam Hy Loo was gone, rubble in my wake, but she was alive, and my daughters had survived, and I had lost everything I’d ever known, but I had my children still. And in the only thing about me that I’ve been proud of for a long time, I knew that was enough.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tooth my baby what have i done to you D:


	14. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> at last, the end. my gushing at the bottom, alright?

It was silent in the room, when Tooth stopped speaking. It was long dark; instead of interrupting, Aster had chosen to let the fire die down, and now only the faint orange light did anything to illuminate the room.

Aster didn’t trust himself to speak. A lot - so much of the past few months, so much of what had happened - made a sinking kind of sense. Things Tooth had said were suddenly deeper, and Aster could see the echoes of this story in his memories of her, going back to the point where they’d first met, in the hospital room where she’d examined him.

In his head, with these new-old memories returned to him, he felt an ache, not unlike the kind that struck if he spent too long in the sun without water. A resonance.

Jack breathed out beside him, the breath rattling out of his lungs. The sound was loud in the dark room. ‘I…’ he began, then stopped. ‘Tooth…’

She just looked in their direction, and Aster suddenly wasn’t entirely sure she was there with them.

He got to his feet, ears twitching uncomfortably; beside him, Jack turned his head to look, but Tooth didn’t so much as move. Aster edged nearer, but she never looked away from that middle distance.

‘Tooth,’ he said softly, and she jerked, eyes fluttering open and closed before focussing on him.

‘Oh, Bunny! I’m sorry, I was away with the pixies,’ she said.

‘No, ye - ye’re fine,’ Aster said, breathing a little nervous. ‘Can I - are ye -?’

‘I’m alright, dear,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I don’t think about it very often anymore. It never does me any good.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Aster said, hovering awkwardly beside her seat.

‘Whatever for?’

The thing was, Aster didn’t have a lot experience in this. He was learning - and with Jack, it had always been easier than with anyone else - but there was still something in him that balked at forcing the feelings in his chest into words. Too long spent not talking, he supposed, in all sorts of ways. He struggled a moment more, before sighing, and bending over.

Tooth squeaked a bit when he hugged her, but it was only a spare second before her arms came up, wrapped around his neck, and held on.

‘Can I cut in?’ Jack’s voice asked from behind, and without looking Aster reached back, catching his sleeve in his paw and towing him nearer. Tooth’s arm had already extended, and then Jack was there, laying his head atop Tooth’s, fingers buried in the fur of Aster’s back.

Tooth said something softly, and it rolled in the air between the three of them, the sounds unfamiliar to Aster.

‘What does that mean?’ he asked, when she’d finished, and been silent a moment.

‘It’s what my parents told me,’ she replied, voice wobbling just the tiniest bit on the word. ‘The day I left for the temple and became a Sister of Flight. It’s not an exact translation, but it’s close to  _ home comes to those who make a place for it.’ _

‘Home is where the heart is?’ Jack offered.

‘Close enough,’ Tooth said, and pulled back. Aster let her go, but Jack’s fingers tightened in his fur, so he drew him up against his side, still half-crouched beside Tooth’s chair. It wasn’t terribly uncomfortable for him, his legs being shaped for it, and Jack had crossed his legs, sitting afloat in the air.

‘Okay, I’ve gotta ask,’ Jack blurted after another moment of silence. ‘Singing?’

Tooth nodded. ‘Singing,’ she confirmed.

‘None of them - Baby Tooth doesn’t have a dad?’ Jack said, and looked bewildered.

‘Certainly not,’ Tooth said, and made a face. ‘My goodness, no. No, thank you.’

‘They came from  _ eggs?’ _

‘Yes,’ Tooth sighed. ‘It does sound strange when said aloud, doesn’t it? But - do you understand why I kept it secret?’

Aster nodded, and Jack, who’d opened his mouth beside him, closed it again.

‘If ye could do it,’ Aster said slowly, ‘Others could. Other mutts who would use it terribly.’

‘Exactly,’ she said, and some subtle tension in her body disappeared. ‘Can you imagine? It can be done by one person, but I think that might just be me - who I am, dreams and all. I think others might need two or more. And someone could misuse that knowledge so badly, or hurt my girls, and I could never let that happen. When I realised what it could mean - the ways people could, could mass-produce  _ children,  _ match up gifts and - it could have meant a whole new war. One with a real reason to be fought, not just anger and hurt. I had to keep it secret, even from my babies.’

Jack was thinking hard, Aster could practically feel it. Giving him time to mull this over, Aster asked, ‘And Baby Tooth was yer last?’

Tooth nodded. ‘I think hatching as early as she did resulted in the way her gift developed,’ she said, and her face grew drawn. ‘I tell myself that, because otherwise her egg was damaged in the explosion, and... I  _ hurt  _ her, if that’s true. That’s why she had so much trouble as a child, and it was something  _ I  _ did to her. Why she can’t speak, or control the empathy. I can’t live with that.’

‘And,’ Aster said, swallowing, ‘and me memories?’

Tooth’s expression was utter misery. ‘I could see it eating you,’ she whispered. ‘From the inside out. I’d felt the same, and it had hollowed me out, and if I hadn’t had my daughters, it would have killed me. I - I panicked, my dear. I did something wrong, and it’s so much worse than anything else I’ve ever done. I denied you that chance to grow past it, to become more. It was cruel.’

‘Ye saved me life, Tooth,’ Aster replied, swallowing again, throat tight. ‘I mean. It was wrong. And it - it hurt me.’

Tooth flinched, and Aster reached out again, catching her tiny fingers in his paw.

‘But ye said it yerself - it could have  _ killed me,’ _ Aster stressed. ‘It wasn’t right. But I’m not sure there was a right thing ye could have done. Left it alone? Left me to die? I’m  _ alive,  _ Tooth,’ he said, and squeezed her hand. ‘I’m alive, and I have Jack, and Emma, and ye. I have a family again. If ye’d told me then that I would be happy, that it wouldn’t hurt forever, I would never have believed ye. And I would never have found out.’

Tooth was crying, silent tears pouring from her wide eyes, and she touched his face with gentle fingers.

He felt the questioning brush of her mind against his, and he nodded. She wouldn’t hurt him. And when her emotions touched his, and he saw the deep vastness of her love for him, her affection and guilt and adoration, it began to fill in a gulf in his heart he hadn’t even been aware was still there. A parent’s love, even if it wasn’t his own; she loved him as if he was.

_ Thank you, _ she was murmuring, over and over, languages tumbling in her head.

‘Thank ye,’ he returned, once, steady.

Jack’s hand settled on the hand Aster still held, and Tooth’s mind brushed just as lovingly in his direction before retreating.

‘This was the point,’ he said, and Aster was confused for a second, before recalling that hazy conversation, months and months ago. ‘This is what you were getting at, all along, what you meant to tell us.’

Tooth nodded. ‘You deserve to know. You deserve it, most of all.’

Aster took a moment to catch on, and when he did, his heart dipped and soared in his chest. ‘Wait. Earlier, ye said ye did it on yer own, but that ye think that’s just how it worked for  _ ye.’ _

‘Yes,’ Tooth said, patiently watching him.

‘So,’ Aster said, and stumbled over the words, ‘Ye think that - that  _ we  _ could -?’

‘Yes.’

The word almost toppled him back onto the floor, and Jack’s grip around his waist was about the only thing keeping him upright.

A child. A  _ child,  _ theirs. Aster had resigned himself to never having that - he couldn’t imagine asking someone else to bear a child for them and give it up. Or knowing their child had lost their birth parents, or had been abandoned; not that he could love them less for that, if anyone could. Only that he was glad he wasn’t selfish enough to wish for that sort of misery for the sake of his own happiness.

But now,  _ now…  _ something that wasn’t selfish. Something that didn’t hurt anyone else, or god forbid, the child. Theirs. Aster’s, and Jack’s. 

‘How?’ Jack asked, and Aster could hear the tightly reined hope in his voice, the sound of joy that could come to be.

‘I can’t explain it,’ she said, after visibly struggling a moment. ‘But I can give you something of the memory? If that would help?’

‘Ye can do that?’ Aster said, blinking.

‘I’ve gotten very good at this memory thing,’ Tooth said, and to his surprise, actually winked at him. ‘How do you think I’ve been getting everyone’s stories?’

Jack’s hand on his back tightened again.

Aster turned to him. ‘Snowbird?’

Jack looked over, and there was a smile on his face, even if it was a little tight. ‘I want to,’ he said, his voice hushed. ‘But - we aren’t ready. You know that.’

Some of the giddiness left Aster at that. Jack was right. Only a month ago, they’d been on the verge of breaking apart.

Aster sucked in a deep breath, then nodded. Looked back to Tooth. ‘Not yet,’ he said, and he felt Jack’s body relax into his as he said it. ‘Someday. Soon, I hope. But not yet.’

Tooth smiled, and it was gentle, loving. ‘When you’re ready.’

Aster went to reply, but Tooth yawned widely, and he bit back whatever he’d been about to say. It was late. Everyone was tired.

‘Ready for a lie down?’ he asked her, straightening up.

‘Yes, I am,’ she agreed. She took to the air, hummingbird wings blurring into motion, and she hovered a moment, looking at them both. Aster looked back, Jack beside him. ‘I love you both, very much,’ she said, each word pronounced clearly, as if she was trying to make them remain in the air longer than sound normally did.

‘We love you,’ Jack replied, and Aster nodded, because he didn’t trust his voice to say it.

She smiled.

Jack led her up to the room she’d used before, as Aster rebuilt the fire. Winter was drawing to an end outside, slowly but surely; in another month or two, the snows would recede entirely. Planting would begin, the soil rested from the cold months past. At the moment, though, Aster just felt at peace. At rest, himself.

Tomorrow would come with all of his problems still intact: remaking his relationship with Jack, muddling through his returned memories, and now - this brilliant future, terrifying and wondrous, hopeful and joyful and so, so easy to break. For now, however, there was a calm in the centre of his soul.

‘Aster? Sweetheart?’

Aster turned; Jack was lit up in the renewed glow of the fire, skin and hair a softened gold, blue eyes shot through with flickering bronze. Aster swallowed.

‘Snowbird,’ he said, and the way he said it said a lot of things he wasn’t entirely sure how to make into words.

Jack grinned, and floated nearer, before setting on the ground. ‘Come on, let’s go to bed,’ he said, reaching out and taking Aster’s paw. ‘We’ll talk about it tomorrow.’

Aster nodded, and allowed himself to be led, Jack taking care of him, the way he so often did.

  
  


_ Aster knew that when he opened his eyes, he’d be sitting in the little room, moss and soil and stone, the table round and short. He kept them closed a moment longer. _

_ It wasn’t precisely that he disliked coming here. Other Aster was, in his strange way, a pleasant enough bloke. He had a pompousness to him that Aster just didn’t feel, having spent his life on a farm, but it wasn’t bad, per se. Different. The same. It wasn’t something that Aster chose to think on too closely; only headaches lay down those paths. _

_ Unfortunately, coming here was almost always a portent of more complications coming his way, and he had enough on his plate without adding yet another emergency. _

_ ‘Sweetheart?’ _

_ Aster’s eyes snapped open in surprise. ‘Snowbird?’ _

_ Jack looked as bewildered as he felt, sitting beside him on a stool that had never had anyone sitting on it for as long as Aster had been having these dreams. _

_ ‘What are ye doing here?’ Aster asked, reaching out. Jack reached back, took his paw in his slim fingers. _

_ ‘Uh, not really sure. This isn’t my usual room,’ Jack quipped, but his grip was far from relaxed. ‘Usually, I’ve got a little waterfall over there.’ He gestured to their right, which was plain wall here. ‘You got the boring digs, clearly.’ _

_ Aster rolled his eyes. ‘Says ye,’ he replied, lacing their fingers together. ‘Do ye think -’ _

_ ‘Yeah,’ Jack said, picking up what Aster meant before he could get partway through the sentence. ‘Seems like the kind of -’ _

_ ‘Thing they’d be involved in, yeah.’ _

_ ‘Interested, at least.’ _

_ ‘Reckon.’ _

_ ‘Well,’ Aster heard his own voice drawl from the doorway, ‘glad to see ye two have worked things out.’ _

_ Aster turned in unison with Jack, and saw both Other Aster and Other Jack in the doorway. It was strange, as ever, to see the doubles, even with the blatant differences; Other Aster was taller, and his clothes were eccentric. Other Jack was shorter than Aster’s, thinner, and visibly younger now. Jack had aged some in the past two years, Aster realised. He looked less like a boy (though Aster suspected he’d always look younger than his age) and more like a man. Other Jack was still a teenager. Always would be. _

_ ‘We’re working on it,’ Aster replied, because saying it was worked out was a bit of a stretch. _

_ ‘Making progress, for sure,’ Jack added, squeezing Aster’s fingers. _

_ ‘Some days more than others,’ Aster tacked on, mostly because he was still a little bitter over being soaked with freezing water in below-freezing temperatures. _

_ Jack laughed, and the sound rang off the walls and settled comfortably like a warm mantle around Aster’s shoulders, the way it did whenever he was the source of the laughter. He glanced at Jack, and smiled helplessly when he caught his eye. _

_ Other Aster groaned, but Other Jack was beaming fit to burst. ‘Told you it would turn out alright,’ he said to Jack. _

_ ‘No,  _ you _ said that I had to get my shit together or everyone was dead,’ Jack shot back, grinning, and Aster’s ears snapped forward at the same time as Other Aster’s. _

_ ‘Ye said  _ what,’ _ Other Aster demanded, voice flat. _

_ ‘It was supposed to be a kick in the pants,’ Other Jack said hastily, holding up a hand. ‘Seriously, that blizzard would have killed them all, it’s not like I was  _ lying -’

_ ‘Are ye  _ mental?’ _ Aster demanded, leaning forward. ‘Why would ye just - say it like that? Crikey, no wonder Snowbird went into a blind panic, ye great mad jumbuck, how did ye even think that would  _ work -’

_ ‘Holy shit, he sounds just like you,’ Other Jack said, sounding not nearly as apologetic as Aster felt he should. ‘Do you remember? Like ninety years back, in Nick’s workshop?’ _

_ Other Aster nodded, looking very, very resigned to his fate. ‘Yeah.’ _

_ ‘How - how is that not offensive?’ Other Jack mimicked, affecting a very passable version of the two Asters’ accent. He cracked up, and Aster scowled. _

_ ‘Look here, ye shithead,’ Aster snapped. ‘Are ye going to apologise for being an overdramatic prick, or not?’ _

_ Other Jack’s mouth clicked closed, eyes going wide, and there was a second of silence that was particularly gratifying before laughter filled the room again - this time from Other Aster, and his own Jack. _

_ Jack looked to be physically struggling for breath when Aster turned his annoyed gaze on his husband, and held up a hand, wheezing. _

_ ‘What?’ Aster bit out, very, very irritated. _

_ ‘I - oh, sweetheart, oh my god,’ Jack managed to get out through his laughter. ‘You should have seen your  _ face,  _ seriously, I thought you’d go punch him -’ _

_ ‘Would have deserved it,’ Other Aster added, his laughter quieter but no more subdued. Other Jack rolled his eyes, but held up both his hands defensively when Aster directed his glare in that direction. _

_ ‘Okay, fine, fine,’ he said placatingly, ‘before I have to say I’ve been punched by you in two universes. Sorry, PA!Me.’ _

_ ‘It’s cool, asshole!me,’ Jack replied in kind, and Other Aster began to laugh again. _

_ Aster huffed, but Jack was running his thumb over Aster’s knuckles, and he sent a soft smile towards Aster, and that did a lot to soothe his temper. _

_ ‘Apologies aside,’ Other Aster said, calming himself at last and giving Other Jack a glance that said this would be laughed about more fully later, ‘do either of ye know why ye’re here?’ _

_ Aster and Jack traded a look. Jack tilted his head towards their other selves, as if to ask if Aster wanted to be the one to say it. Aster flicked his right ear and shrugged his right shoulder at the same time; he didn’t mind one way or the other. He did glance at Other Jack, then back to his own, with some emphasis. He was still annoyed, and was likely to snap at him if he said something wrong. Might be better for Jack to handle. _

_ Jack grinned, shrugged back, and turned to the other two. _

_ ‘Yeah, we think we do,’ he said confidently. ‘The thing Tooth told us tonight. About the singing.’ _

_ Other Aster was looking between the two of them with an approving glance that Aster wasn’t sure how he was supposed to handle - it was a little strange, to like the approval of your alternate universe self. ‘Good, then ye’ve got the last piece, mostly.’ _

_ ‘Mostly,’ Jack repeated, and raised an eyebrow. _

_ ‘Yes. Yer Tooth doesn’t know everything about what happened, though our Tooth’s managing that right now. We’re here to clear up some of it for ye.’ _

_ ‘What, you mean the singing?’ _

_ ‘Yep,’ Other Jack said. ‘Which is just how she interpreted it. I mean, it’s close, but for all that your universe has magic, no one’s really studied it yet. Not anyone in your universe, anyway.’ _

_ ‘So what really happened?’ Jack asked, leaning forward. ‘If it wasn’t some kind of - what, magical music?’ _

_ ‘Yeah, definitely not,’ Other Jack said, shaking his head. ‘If you guys tried that, you wouldn’t get anywhere. It wasn’t music, it was her gift.’ _

_ Aster’s heart sank at that. _

_ Jack’s hand tightened around his, and he said, faux-casual, ‘So, we can’t -’ _

_ ‘Ugh, I’m not saying this right,’ Other Jack said, and looked to Other Aster with a helpless look. _

_ ‘She used her gift to create the eggs,’ Other Aster said, ears twitching irritably. ‘Ye’d do the same.’ _

_ Jack’s grip relaxed. ‘So we can still have kids,’ he said, and it was the first time either of them had said it aloud. It carried weight in the room. _

_ ‘Kids?’ Other Jack asked with a raised eyebrow. _

_ ‘Kids,’ Aster affirmed before Jack could, Jack’s tightening fingers signalling his surprise and ensuing panic. ‘No idea how many yet, we haven’t had a chance to talk about it.’ _

_ ‘Well, now’s a good a time as ever,’ Other Aster said, waving a paw. _

_ ‘Reckon that might be a private convo,’ Aster returned, and Jack’s fingers relaxed all the way. _

_ ‘Tooth’s memory will help you out, anyway,’ Other Jack said. ‘Show you more of the process. But you’ll use your gifts.’ _

_ ‘Alright,’ Aster said, though he couldn’t quite picture how that would work, much less in tandem with Jack’s. He had a brief picture of growing a child like an apple, and had to bite back a snort. _

_ ‘Is that all?’ Jack asked. ‘Because if so, I mean, we could have probably found that out on our own.’ _

_ Other Aster looked amused. ‘Couldn’t we have wanted to lob in, see how ye lot were doing?’ _

_ Jack sighed, then grinned. Aster, very familiar with that grin, tried not to sigh himself. _

_ ‘So,’ Jack began, sitting forward. ‘What about you two, huh?’ _

_ Other Jack blinked. ‘What about us?’ _

_ ‘Are you two going to have kids someday?’ Jack said, and waggled his eyebrows. _

_ His attempt at riling them up fell flat, as Other Aster snorted. ‘Bloody oath, no,’ he said. ‘Got enough of them, I think.’ _

_ Jack reared back. ‘What?’ _

_ Other Jack was grinning so wide the top of his head was about to come off. ‘What’s the count, now?’ he said, leaning back and looking over at Other Aster. ‘Three, four billion?’ _

_ ‘Are we counting the offworlders, now, or just the Earth’s?’ _

_ ‘Oh, come on, those colonies are new, there’s like four kids out there -’ _

_ ‘Twelve, I checked last -’ _

_ ‘Yeah, but none of them are mine, yet, they haven’t managed to program the wet-systems for frozen precipitation.’ _

_ Other Aster was frowning. ‘How do they expect half their crops to grow, then?’ _

_ ‘Well, I wasn’t about to fly out to freaking Mars to do it for them, even I think that’s a little unsubtle -’ _

_ ‘I’m lost,’ Aster said faintly. ‘Ye have  _ how  _ many?’ _

_ ‘Depends on your definition of ‘ours’,’ Other Jack said cheekily. ‘But yeah, I think we cracked four billion two years ago.’ _

_ ‘I take it back, I don’t want to know,’ Aster said, and the edges of his vision were starting to darken. _

_ ‘Another time,’ Other Aster said, sounding a tinge regretful. ‘As to yers - when ye have them, if ye do - don’t worry about it. Yer magic will know what to do, even if ye don’t.’ _

_ ‘Helpful,’ Jack muttered under his breath, looking put out that his joke had been cut tragically short. ‘Like we couldn’t have figured that out.’ _

_ Aster huffed out a laugh, and held Jack’s hand as he slid back into dreams. _

_ He hoped this would be the last dream for a good,  _ long _ while. _

  
  


Spring, as always, crept into the valley underneath winter’s nose. The snows began to melt, and mud - the only part of spring that managed to annoy Aster - was everywhere. It annoyed the flock as well, with its two new lambs, though the chickens were delighted with the tiny green shoots of grass.

Aster felt the spring for the first time in his bones: vibrating higher than his sense of the earthblood, but resonating, a mellow alto to the earth’s thrumming bass. He suspected the new sense had something to do with Jack.

Jack’s control grew by leaps and bounds, and though the going was sometimes slow when it came to matters between the two of them, they talked more. Aster supposed that made all the difference. The Wind didn’t seem bothered by all of the new winds that seemed to congregate around Jack, instead herding them around like the bossy little miss she was. He got the hang of water, at last, and the temperature control. There was now a firm ground rule of ‘none of the happy blue stuff without permission’, which Jack could claim was unfounded all he wanted, Aster would not budge.

The spring in him, the greenery and growing sense of  _ we can do this, we can have this,  _ came to a head one Sunday. Aster didn’t understand it, and was distractable and spaced until about noon, when Jack said,

‘Have you tried just - I don’t know, just doing something? Like, with the earthblood?’

‘Like what?’ Aster asked, confused. ‘Most of the seeds don’t go down for another week, Snowbird.’

‘Not for that,’ Jack said, and floated over, slinging an arm over Aster’s shoulder. Aster’s response to that was an automatic arm around Jack’s waist, and Jack kissed his ear fondly. ‘Just because you can. Might be fun.’

‘I…’ Aster began, then thought about it. ‘Why not?’

‘Because you have a hard time thinking of stuff that isn’t work?’ Jack said, laughing, and pressed another kiss to his eyebrow, the farthest he could reach at the angle he was at. ‘That’s what I’m for.’

‘Yer for a lot more than that, Snowbird,’ Aster said, and turned his head, pulling Jack around for a proper kiss. ‘Come on, I’ve an idea.’

‘Dangerous,’ Jack quipped, but let himself be towed outside, into the centre of the fields.

Right now, they were little more than bare dirt, but deep beneath the soil was the endless earthblood, sleeping still even as the world above was stirring. Aster reckoned that was something he could fix, and crouched down.

‘Sweetheart?’

‘Watch, love,’ Aster said, an image blossoming in his mind, and began to pull.

The earthblood beneath was still asleep, quiet in a way Aster hadn’t ever consciously thought about, but of course it would be; winter was its period of rest. Now, though, it needed to waken, and like it had been waiting for his call, it began to creep up. The humming buzz of  _ springspringspring  _ in him was like the first touch of sunlight on unfurled leaves, the earthblood beneath in deep counterpoint, and he was no longer  _ pulling _ so much as  _ guiding. _

Up it came, and up, picking up speed, and he felt  _ alive,  _ the same way he did when his friends spoke and made plans and looked at one another like family, the way he did when Jack laughed and flew and placed his hand on his paw, and it bloomed outward with a bright, bell-note that rang through every cell of his body.

Wildflowers burst into life, radiating out from him, a vast expanding circle of greenredgreenblue _ green  _ that he couldn’t see but could feel. The trees, each rooted in the system from the tiniest sapling to the Oak to Robin itself, gave themselves a little shake, and in his ears he heard them, miles and miles of them, more than he should be able to hear at once.

_ Spring. Spring. The Earth-waker calls. The Storm-maker sings. Rains come. Seeds grow. Spring. Spring. _

Aster realised that wasn’t the only sound in his ears, and he came back to himself, enough to see through his own eyes.

Beside him, Jack’s eyes were closed, and his lips parted; from between them came little snatches of windsong, brief trills and liquid tones, and it  _ fit,  _ Aster realised. It was a farewell, soft and loving - a eulogy to winter, and a promise to come back. It sang so sweetly beside the earthblood, and the spring buzz, and Aster realised with a start how they could do this. Not only that, but that they  _ should. _

‘Jack,’ he whispered, his human voice strange in the air. Jack turned, tilting his head down. His eyes were a blue Aster could call sky-blue, ocean-blue, and never get it quite right. His hand came and settled on Aster’s shoulder, and drew him to standing.

‘Do you feel that?’ Jack asked, softly. They stood now amidst a field of wildflowers, sky clear above them, and Aster had no eyes for that, only for how Jack picked up Aster’s left paw and cradled it in his hands. Aster cupped the back of Jack’s left, completing the hold, and he nodded. ‘Are we - right now?’

‘We should send word to Tooth,’ Aster murmured. He made no move to pull away. Neither did Jack.

‘We should,’ Jack agreed. ‘We should tell Emma. Baby Tooth. Caroline and Consuela, oh man, they’re going to freak -’

‘North,’ Aster reminded him, and Jack made a face.

‘Yeah, good point. We can tell them later.’

‘I love ye,’ Aster said, stepping forward a half-step. Jack matched the movement, so their hands were cradled between them, as if carrying something large that needed two sets of hands and not the air that was the only thing there.

‘I love you,’ Jack returned, tilting his head up. Aster dipped his head, kissing Jack gently on the mouth.

Beneath them, the earthblood began to hum, deep resonance up and into their bones, and Jack gasped in a surprised breath. In the next second his breath came out as a long, slow slide up to a note Aster hadn’t thought his voice could reach, and he’d had two years to get used to the way Jack’s voice changed to accommodate this other language.

Aster hummed back, matching the earthblood, and he knew, now, why Tooth had described it as a song. It  _ was,  _ the winds above in a constant, shushing chorus, earthblood a deep and incessant bassline below, and in the middle, Aster and Jack’s voices, their gifts like lights in their hands.

Aster couldn’t see any longer, vision blotted out by some internal sight; green and blue,  _ white, _ both of the lights for their own reasons. White for snow, white for melting, white for canvases and undyed yarns; green for growth and blue for nurturing, blue for beginnings and green for endings, green for starts and blue for stops. Meeting in the middle, blending, and now it was a colour Aster knew he could never recreate in the world, and mourned because it would never exist outside this space, and rejoiced because he’d known it.

He didn’t know how long they stood there and sang, the world listening intently, but it finally drew to a close, the hum fading, the last note wavering into thin air.

There was a weight in their arms, smooth and warm and large. Aster opened his eyes at the same time as Jack.

‘A goog?’ Aster said, surprised. It was wide and large, easily the size of one of the new lambs, soft greens and blues swirling over the surface in closely entwined but separate curls. It was beautiful, otherworldly. ‘An  _ egg? _ ’

‘Looks like it wasn’t just a Tooth thing,’ Jack replied, voice awed, and Aster couldn’t tear his eyes from it (an egg,  _ their _ egg, their  _ child),  _ but he’d bet everything he owned that he knew the expression Jack wore, anyway.

‘It’s bigger than mine were, at least.’

Aster’s reaction was instinctive; he pressed the goog into Jack’s arms, sliding his paws away and shifting Jack’s into a more supportive position, then he shoved Jack behind him and turned, putting himself firmly between them and the intrusion.

Tooth looked at him, singularly unimpressed. Aster could feel the red creeping up into his ears.

‘You two could have  _ told _ me, you know,’ she said, nearing slowly. ‘I felt the song, and came as fast as I could. I thought you’d need the memory.’

Aster blinked. ‘We were singing that long?’

‘The sun is about to set, dear,’ she said in answer, and Aster was stunned.

‘Are you done, sweetheart?’ Jack said from behind him, sounding very, very amused. ‘Because I’d like to get this little guy in a safe place.’

‘I’ll go inside, start getting something ready,’ Tooth said, looking annoyed. ‘Honestly, I could have been ready  _ hours ago  _ if you two had just…’

Aster shuffled out of the way, and as she flew off was unable to resist setting a paw on the shell once more, soft periwinkle and mint green swirled over the surface. The earthblood beneath hummed, and in the same way he knew trees and plants, he knew this egg. It was his, and Jack’s, and it was  _ theirs. _ More immediately, however -

‘I reckon I know why it’s so large,’ Aster said, and grinned at Jack, who was staring at him. ‘But ye’re right. We should get them to a safe place.’

‘Them?’ Jack repeated, latching onto the important part of the sentence, and his eyes couldn’t go much wider without falling out of his head. ‘There’s more than one?’

Aster slid his palm over the surface. ‘Two. Twins, Snowbird.’

‘Twins,’ Jack whispered, staring at the goog now. ‘Twins.’ He looked back up at Aster, and a grin was spread over his face that Aster knew intimately. ‘We -  _ twins, _ Aster.’

Aster felt pride in his chest, and he leaned over the goog, and kissed Jack on the mouth. ‘Twins,’ he agreed, and chuckled. ‘Let’s go get them warmed up, yeah? Still got some months before they’ll be ready, reckoning from Tooth’s account.’

Aster led the way to their home, hovering protectively over Jack and  _ their egg, _ and all around them, spring bloomed and sang, and winter did not retreat just yet, content to lay on the mountains with gentled claws.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ohhhh my goodness. alright, thank you for sticking through with me, I appreciate it very much! it meant a lot to see everyone's kudos and comments, i'm so glad so many of you stuck through with it.
> 
> So. Eggs, huh? -grins madly-
> 
> The last part of It Tolls for Thee, When the Long Trick's Over, will take a couple of weeks to go up - I'm in the middle of preparing for my licensing exam, so I'm taking a wee bit of a break.
> 
> Also: bonus material will be up tomorrow or Monday, and will include amongst my normal bonuses of my notes and other handy dandy bits and bobs, two bonus scenes. What's in them? Who knows! (I know. I think.)
> 
> Again, thank you, and I hope you'll stick out this last little bit for me. Even if you don't, it was a pleasure to have you as a reader :D And as long as we all had a good time together, that's all that matters.


	15. Encore: Emma and Padma

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TatHW's bonus material is much smaller than PA's, largely because much of its notes actually lays out groundwork for the final part, When the Long Trick's Over. Thus, it will be included in WtLTO's bonus material, which will hopefully include such gems as: map of Normerica and the northern chunk of Aztlan, a quick sketch of Riverfield, a quick glossary to which city is built from which city... it's gonna be big, probably. I say. If I can do all of that, hahaha... -sobs-
> 
> Anyway, have this bonus scene, set during Intermission: Histories. For those who were curious, and for many who weren't. :D

‘So ye have to tell me,’ Aster said, setting the tea down in front of Emma. Outside, snow was falling in gentle swirls; Midwinter was a week away, and she’d dropped in with the most desperate look on her face Aster had ever seen. Apparently, North was going extra-troppo this year when it came to holiday preparations, going so far as to insist on decorating the hospital - and Emma, out of places to escape to, had fled to the farm.

‘Tell you what?’ Emma asked, picking up her tea and blowing on it.

‘Ye know what.’

‘No, seriously, I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

Aster grinned. ‘I haven’t seen ye since before Padma swung by,’ he said, and chuckled when her face went a little pink. ‘For shame, Emma, putting it off this long.’

‘It hasn’t been that long!’ Emma protested, not meeting his eyes.

‘Mm,’ Aster replied noncommittally. She wouldn’t be getting off that easily. Aster might not always know the proper way to have a little sister, but since what he could see of Jack and Emma’s relationship was spent mostly teasing and slinging almost-insults, he wasn’t sure he wanted to do it the  _ proper _ way, anyway. This sort of teasing, however, he was at least familiar with. ‘So ye’ve  _ not _ been avoiding Robin and I. I see.’

‘I’m not avoiding you! Or Robin!’ She grinned at the nearest wall. ‘Robin loves me, you liar. It knows I would never avoid it.’

_ Breezy girl has been gone a long time, _ Robin said disapprovingly, in a little shake from roots to crown. It was gentle, but enough to rattle her teacup.  _ Breezy girl avoids us? Why, carer-friend, friend-carer-friend? _

Robin had been getting better about its language slowly, still attached to repeating things, but catching on that most people didn’t do that; Aster reckoned it wouldn’t be long until it was forming more structured sentences, all on its own. Aster sighed and clucked his tongue against his teeth before passing the message along, for the maximum appearance of disapproval.

‘I’m not avoiding you!’ Emma cried, wide-eyed and hasty as she blurted out, ‘Neither of you, promise! I just didn’t want to see -’

She shut her mouth and looked furious with herself, even as Aster began to laugh. ‘Okay, fine, alright,’ she muttered. ‘I’ve been avoiding Jack. Padma said that he was surprised I was dating anyone, and that he’d been…’

‘Ah,’ Aster said, laughter fading. ‘Er. He’s not angry, Em.’

‘I know he’s not,’ Emma groaned, and slumped onto the table dramatically. ‘But he’s never going to let me live it down, I just know it.’

Aster thought about the look of glee he’d seen on Jack’s face when he’d realised he could tease Baby Tooth about this, and winced. ‘...Reckon ye might have a point, there.’

‘See what I mean?’ Emma said, not lifting her head from where it was buried in her arms. ‘Only reason I could come visit today was because Tooth said Jack had errands to run in the town.’

Aster couldn’t help his smile - it was always going to warm him from the inside out, how very firmly Emma considered  _ him _ her brother, too. Family was a wonderful thing.

‘Well, then,’ Aster said after a moment. ‘I’ll just have to fill in for him.’

Emma’s answering groan shook the table and sloshed some tea onto her arm.

‘Why did I even bother,’ she said, muffled. ‘Why did I even  _ miss _ you, you’re just as bad as he is -’

Aster laughed. ‘No, I’m not, and ye know it.’ He cocked his ears as she continued to mumble. ‘Oi, watch it, or I’ll have to tell Nick ye know what those words mean.’

‘Grandfather can go shove them right -’

‘Alright, enough,’ Aster said, a bit alarmed, and she subsided into mutterings. ‘Strewth, ye’d think I was going to torture ye.’

‘This isn’t torture?’

‘I was going to ask how ye two started dating, since it’s all been so hush-hush,’ Aster said, and Emma lifted her head a bit, peering at him through her fall of brown hair. ‘But I s’pose I can leave that to J -’

‘That’s it?’ she said, sitting up. ‘Why didn’t you say so, you big jerk?’

Aster lifted an eyebrow. ‘Tried to, Em.’

‘No, you were being a jerk.’

‘I could try and -’

‘No, don’t you call him back here with your creepy-couple telepathy,’ she said, grabbing her tea. Aster scowled.

‘This from ye? Baby Tooth has literal telepathy.’

‘Yeah, but she has to touch you to make it work. You two just - I don’t know. It’s weird. You’ll just show up when the other one needs you, or like look at each other, and then bam, an entire conversation was had.’

‘Not always,’ Aster replied, sensible. They had their moments. Didn’t everyone?

‘Oh, stop it, this is why Jack complains when you do the reasonable thing,’ Emma huffed, and sipped her tea. ‘Do you want the story or not?’

Thinking to himself that his life had rather a lot of those lately, Aster poured himself a cuppa and settled in.

  
  


‘Okay, so your face tells me that I’m not going to get away with the short version, because nothing in my life is easy. No, don’t say anything, oh my god. Don’t. Jack interrupts all the time when I try to tell him something, try to be the bigger person - no, wait, oh come  _ on. _

‘Don’t let him infect you like that, not everything is a pun.

_ ‘Anyway,  _ now that I’m not being  _ interrupted,  _ I… huh. Okay, start with the beginning, that’s what Sandy always says. The beginning was obviously when we got here.

‘So, um. I don’t really want to talk about - yeah, all of that. If that’s okay?

‘Thanks. But when we got here, and I met Tooth and Padma at Grandfather’s, I mean. Wow, this is actually kind of hard to talk about. So, I’ve seen, you know, not every kind of mutt in the world, but a lot of kinds. Santa Juanita was a port town, even if it was a small one, and so a lot of people came through. I’d never really seen someone like you, though, and I’d  _ definitely _ never seen someone like Tooth or Padma.

‘Jack had mentioned the feathers, so I figured Padma was a bird animutt, but he hadn’t mentioned that they would both be so pretty. Tooth’s pretty in that kind of - mom way, you know? Like I remember my Ma being, even if they didn’t look anything alike. The way you remember them, even if they aren’t  _ really _ pretty. Which she is, but you know what I mean.

‘Padma was pretty in the way that paintings are pretty. I didn’t really think people looked like that, outside of books. The big eyes, and the green feathers - she looked like somebody had made her out of glass and paint and gold.

‘Shut up. Look, no matter how stupid what I’m saying sounds, it won’t beat this look you get on your face when you look at Jack, sometimes. I think I could slap you and it would take a minute or two to sink into your head that your face hurt.

‘Oh. Well, thanks. That’s nice to say. I like the poetry section of the library, too. There’s this book of poetry in Espautl I translated for Sandy last year, some guy from the Before called Pablo something or other. It was good.

‘Anyway, so they came flying in, and she took my hand, and it was - just, wow. Bunny, it was like my brain had been empty, and suddenly there was colour, and a voice, and sensation… I think part of it was, uh, how I felt after Ma… well, it felt like all the colour drained out of the world. And, I mean, sometimes it still does. I don’t know if that goes away? But I have people, so it’s okay.

‘Thanks.

‘So, yeah. That’s where it started. I didn’t know until later, but - yeah, it was an automatic click for me. I mean, we’re sixteen, so who knows where stuff will end up? I know most people don’t end up with their first loves forever, and I know most people say this, but I can’t really imagine anyone else for me.

‘...really? So Jack dated around, but you didn’t. And since he’s felt this way about you since he  _ got _ here… Well. I mean, you guys are the exception in a million ways. But it’s nice to think about.

‘For a while, that was fine - I mean, I figured out it was a crush on my end about half a year later, I think. It was fall - late fall, maybe. We were in the library, like usual. And the sun was coming through the windows, and she was reading, and I just… it was  _ there.  _ I liked her, a lot. It was Padma.

‘But I didn’t really worry about it. Why? Well, I mean, she was my best friend. We spent all of our time together anyway. It was good no matter what.

‘So we did our thing. We went swimming when it was hot and helped Sandy with the library, and sometimes I’d help out at the hospital, or we’d both go to the school and help out a little there. That school needs an overhaul, though - the lady who runs it, Ms. Woolson? Yeah, the telekinetic lady - she’s getting older.

‘What? She’s like fifty something, that’s old.

‘Well, I mean, Grandfather’s different. I don’t know if he’ll be old even if he hits a hundred.

‘Quit distracting me or we’re never going to get this story over! I don’t know when Jack will be back, I want to be  _ way _ out of here before then.

‘So we were cool for like a year or so, right? Then the week before Midsummer last year, Padma just… disappeared.

‘The first day, I figured she was busy at the hospital, you know? It happens from time to time. I didn’t even bother asking a wind to carry a message over; she’d either come over and say hi when the day was done, or she’d do it the next day. Sandy had a big project - he’d bought a big load of new books off a trading caravan, that’d been salvaged from a burned out library in the Blackbay Ruins. I know, right? I didn’t think salvagers even bothered to go in there anymore, he paid an arm and a leg for it. So worth it, there were a bunch of books in languages I don’t even recognise. Plus -  _ dictionaries.  _ For other languages! It was so cool, but there was a lot to sort through, and Padma and I were helping out. Or we  _ were.  _ She didn’t show up the next day, either.

‘I was starting to get really worried, you know? Padma and I - we spent  _ all _ of our time together. Every spare second - I think that’s maybe why my crush didn’t bother me all that much, because… well, okay, so you know Jamie’s got this massive crush on Caleb, right?

‘Okay, well, you didn’t know, that’s fine. Seriously, though, he does. It’d be really cute if Caleb didn’t have a crush on Pippa, who like three weeks ago said that she doesn’t like anybody at all - what? Yeah, I know, but they’re not  _ that _ much younger than me, I  _ do _ pay attention. Helping out at the school means you get to hear everyone’s dirty secrets. The kids, anyway. Adults are way more doom-and-gloom. So Jamie’s been moping around, sad as anything, and he’s going to be until he realises that Caleb’s not interested, but Claude totally is. Honestly, it’s like one of those romance novels Sandy tries to hide on the top shelves, it’s so ridiculous. Cupcake’s been keeping me informed - yeah, the daughter of the baker, that’s the one.

‘My point is, Jamie’s sad because his crush doesn’t want to spend all of his time with  _ him,  _ right? And maybe if it had been just me who wanted to spend time with her, it would have made me sad, too. But Padma was always looking for me, and she’d stop by even when she was running errands for Tooth - so it never felt like we were competing with other people for attention. It was always us two. That was the way it had been since I  _ got _ here.

‘So when Padma didn’t show up the next day either, it was weird. Really weird. I hadn’t heard anything big was going down at the hospital, there wasn’t some kind of sickness  going around, so I… well, I started to wonder if it was something wrong with  _ Padma.  _ What if she was sick, or hurt?

‘So I started to look for her.

‘First stop was, of course, the hospital, and that’s where I started to think things were fishy. Because instead of finding Padma, I found the triplets, and they weren’t happy to see me.

‘I know, right? I’ve always gotten along with them - all of them, even Mandira, and you know she doesn’t really like people much. You, too? Yeah, I can see that.

‘Well, then, you shouldn’t make the jokes so easy, Bunny!

‘But yeah, they weren’t happy to see me. They were even going out of their way to do the creepy talking-in-circles thing they only do to people they’re mad at - you know, the bits of sentences? Oh, man, they’ve never done that to you? You’ll have to ask to see it, it’s the spookiest thing, they use it to tell ghost stories sometimes.

‘So it starts out with Lakshmi, right, and they’re all staring right at you, and when they were doing this to me she just goes, ‘Oh, it’s you. Padma said -’

‘‘That you would stop by,’ Parvati picked up, and there is like no pause. It’s so spooky, it’s great - well, not great when it’s directed at you. ‘She’s not here right -’

‘‘Now, she’s busy,’ Kali finished. They weren’t even touching, so it wasn’t even the telepathy.

‘‘Well, okay,’ I go, and I’m super nervous, because I don’t know what I did but I pissed them off somehow. ‘Where is she?’

‘‘She’s busy -’

‘‘Looking for herbs -’

‘‘For Maan,’ they all chorus, right, and they’re  _ staring  _ at me, and look, I’m not dumb, I know a lost cause when I see one. So I just go ‘okay thanks bye’ and almost ran out of the hospital.

‘For some reason, the triplets were mad at me, and Padma was missing.

‘Well,  _ duh,  _ I knew they were lying. Padma can’t tell a dandelion from a daylily, it’s why Tooth always sends Mandira or Indira to go gather stuff if she doesn’t just go herself. Padma’s no good at it. Arti never gets sent, either - she’s an animal person. Spends all of her time over at the Nooreys, now, since they’re the ones who keep the most animals. Mr. Noorey’s teaching her animal medicine.

‘Oh, yeah, I forgot she was here for last year’s lambing.

‘So now I’m really worried, but the hospital is a no go. The triplets might not be strong like me, but they could kick my -

‘Oh, stuff it, Bunny, I’m sixteen, I can swear if I want.

‘Grandfather couldn’t skin you if he wanted to, he’s a big old softy.

_ ‘Stop interrupting,  _ you’re as bad as  _ Jack,  _ oh my god.

‘So I was looking all over town for days. Days, Bunny, okay? She wasn’t at the school, Ms. Woolson hadn’t seen her. Sandy hadn’t seen her. The triplets were on guard duty at the hospital, practically, so I couldn’t even get in to ask one of her other sisters or Tooth. And I was just so worried, and I was starting to think that maybe the triplets were mad because  _ Padma _ was mad, and I wasn’t very happy, I’ll give you that for free.

‘Yeah, that’s why I dropped by Midsummer’s day. I thought maybe she had gone to visit you guys to hide, and that maybe if I just found her, she’d  _ talk _ to me.

‘I looked upset because I  _ was _ upset. Jack looked about ready to kick someone’s ass - ha, got it out before you could say it!

‘So I’m heading home, right, and then I hear it. I know the sound of Padma’s wings, I’d heard it almost every day for the past year at that point. So I’m running after her - we still hadn’t figured out how to get the winds to carry me - and she hadn’t noticed yet. She was only a foot off the ground, anyway, off in her own world.

‘I shout her name, I’m so relieved, and I reach out to take her hand. She turns around really fast, and her eyes go really big, and I know I’ve screwed up before I even touch her, but it’s too late.

‘Well, I can’t very well talk to her if I’m not touching her, can I? That’s how we are - I just grab her hand, usually. I didn’t think it was a big deal. I didn’t think that was why she’d been avoiding me.

‘I’ve got her hand in mine, right, and she’s already pulling away, and I let her go. I’d already seen it, though. She was scared, and frustrated, and lonely - but like it was the sea around Santa Juanita, too big to hide, was the world’s biggest crush. On  _ me. _

‘We just kind of stared at each other for a minute, frozen. I mean, what do you do with that? It takes a bit to really click into place, I think.

‘And then just as she’s about to bolt, I just kind of blurted out, ‘Oh, my god, you like me, too?’

‘I still feel kind of dumb about that one. I’d wanted to say it better than that. It got the point across though, because she dropped to the ground, surprised as anything.

‘At that point I was nervous all over again, because just because somebody feels that way doesn’t mean they want to do anything about it, and I was about to start apologising like an idiot when she just kind of - yeah.

‘So she kissed me, we talked it out, it was fine. It had been a big misunderstanding. She’d just figured out that she felt that way, and was scared I’d find out through the touch empathy; apparently, because I’d felt that way almost since the day we met, she hadn’t realised that wasn’t part of my average sort of emotional makeup. She’d thought I didn’t feel that way at all.

‘So all the triplets knew was that Padma was upset and avoiding me. They apologised after that, when they saw we were friends again.

‘Then we dated for a year and kept it secret because Padma wasn’t sure how everyone would take it. So I suggested the permission thing, because I was sure you guys would be fine with it, even if I’d get teased, and here we are. Ta da. Story done.’

  
  


Aster grinned at Emma, who was nursing her second cup of tea. ‘That’s lovely, Em,’ he said, and she smiled back from her teacup, a little shy.

‘You think so?’ she asked.

‘Reckon,’ Aster agreed. Then he directed his grin over her head, towards the door. ‘Don’t ye think so, Snowbird?’

‘Oh, yeah,’ Jack said as Emma whipped around, sending her teacup rolling with a thump onto the floor. ‘It’s adorable.’

‘Jack!’ she sputtered, then looked to Aster. ‘Bunny, why didn’t you tell me he’d come back?’

‘He never left,’ Aster answered peacefully.

‘But Tooth said - ‘ she protested, then her brown eyes widened. ‘Oh, my god! You guys  _ tricked  _ me!’

‘Yep!’ Jack said, walking over. ‘For your own good, though.’

‘How is this -’

‘I’m not mad, and I’m not going to tease you,’ Jack said firmly, and before Emma could panic more, he wrapped her in a hug. ‘Well. Not too bad. But you shouldn’t stay away because you’re scared, Em. We love you, and we’re happy you’re happy. You should have heard the speech Aster gave Baby Tooth, it was great.’

‘Her name is Padma,’ Emma said, but it was muffled in Jack’s shoulder.

‘I know it is,’ Jack replied, ‘but she’s my little sister now. She gets teased, too.’

Aster watched with a fond smile, until Jack jerked his head, clearly wanting Aster to join in. Aster quirked his right ear and his left eyebrow at the same time in answer. Jack rolled his eyes and grinned with the right side of his mouth.

‘You two are doing the creepy couple telepathy thing again, aren’t you,’ Emma said. ‘Just get over here and let us hug you, Bunny, so I can leave and nurse my wounds in peace.’

Aster laughed, and got up to hug them both, love like a soft song in his heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When the Long Trick's Over won't be up for a while, given that it A) is precisely two sentences long at the moment and b) is in fact three parts. I'll keep people posted on impending post-dates over on my tumblr, @ mexicanalesbiana. You're also welcome to just drop by and say hi - it's a personal blog, so most of the fandom stuff is kind of tangential, but I'd be happy to see your smiling faces any time. Thank you for sticking through this story, and I can't wait to see you for the final leg of the journey <3


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